Silent, determined, and swift as he could, Solonn made his way through a bare-walled, nearly empty network of stone tunnels, alone. He knew, as always, that the slightest hesitance could dismantle his willingness to proceed.

Like a passenger in his own mind, he let his instinct guide him, but didn’t lose himself in it completely. This was as conscious an endeavor as it had ever been—he’d always acknowledge the impact and cost of it, never allowing himself to trivialize the matter if he could help it. Though he’d hunted countless times since he’d accepted the need to do so, he was no fonder of it than he’d ever been. For him, it was nothing less and nothing more than the obligation that it was, something demanded but not desired.

His senses remained on high alert, trained toward the particular telltales of his quarry. It wasn’t much longer before he found it. He followed a faint sound of beating wings until the glow of heat confirmed the find.

He closed his eyes for a long, solemn moment. Silently, he apologized to the creature he’d targeted and sent a prayer to the gods, asking them for the safe and sure deliverance of the soul he was about to send their way. He called upon his element, and it responded with an echoing crack. Wings crumpled as their lifeless owner dropped to the floor. The sole witness to her fall drifted forward silently and looked down at her for a short time before closing his eyes and opening his jaws.

Solonn kept respectfully silent as he fed, and when nothing remained of the zubat, he left the scene without hesitation. He looked forward to returning home and not having to hunt again for at least another day. It helped somewhat that he didn’t have to feed nearly as often as he had when he was human, or even quite as often as Morgan had fed him. With the habits of humans and of pokémon kept and pampered by them left largely behind, his body had relaxed its expectations somewhat.

It had been well over a year since he’d returned to Virc-Dho. During that time, Solonn had gotten as used to life as a glalie in the natural setting of his kind as he could, and he’d grown accustomed to the much slower pace of life in the warren.

But even now, there were aspects of Virc society he didn’t quite understand. His friends and family had introduced him to all that they knew of their culture, and he did as he observed them doing. Yet even to this very day, he felt like there was more to the ways of his people than he could see.

Beyond the people he knew personally, the Virc community in general made no effort to bring him into the fold. Though the commotion Grosh had caused was hardly recent, some of its effects still lingered. The fact of the matter was that the origins of those reactions traced back much farther than that single incident.

By and large, the people seemed to know exactly what Solonn was, exactly how he’d come about. They showed him no open hostility—he suspected they were too intimidated by his stature to do so. Still, nearly every time he was in public, at least some of their eyes and faces shifted conspicuously away from him, stealing glances to watch him without seeming to watch him, and he swore he could feel the tension in the air.

Solonn had tried for a while to get through to them, to make them own up to their fears and try to overcome them, but they would not be moved. He’d come to realize firsthand just how deeply ingrained their attitudes were. They were unlikely to change for anyone, let alone a hybrid.

Though still disappointed in their behavior, he no longer tried to get them to treat him the same way they treated each other. To the best of his ability, he instead focused on just living his life like anyone else, regardless of what others thought of him.

After a few minutes’ traveling through the warren, Solonn arrived at what had been his home for the past several months. Jeneth had acquired it for him shortly after its previous owner had passed away. It wasn’t the roomiest place in the warren, but since he lived alone, that suited him just fine.

He’d been less satisfied with the featureless, ice-glazed walls of this place. He’d picked up a preference toward more visually stimulating surroundings as a human, and it had yet to wear off. So he’d decorated the cavern with patterns and images etched into the walls and sculptures raised from the material of the floor, décor that was changed every now and again to keep things interesting.

His passion for ice artistry kept him occupied much of the time in these days. He usually practiced by himself, simply enjoying the serene unity with his element. Just as ever, it offered an escape from the ordinary that he dearly appreciated—especially now that his life contained things he doubted he’d ever be completely comfortable with.

Occasionally, his family or Zilag’s watched him work. He wasn’t interested in performing for a larger audience. He doubted many of the locals would be particularly interested in such a display anyway, and not just because of whom and what he was. Dancing ice wasn’t the exotic spectacle here that it was in the outside world; here, he was just one more ice controller out of hundreds. Any glalie could pull off his art form with equal or greater skill if they practiced as long and as diligently as he had.

He was about to conjure up yet another display, contemplating a number of shapes he might like to sculpt and carve this time, when he heard Jeneth calling to him from the entrance of his cavern. Once he’d unsealed the entrance for him, Solonn got an announcement that immediately drove those ideas away.

“We think it’s happening,” Jeneth said almost breathlessly, his eyelight bright with excitement.

Solonn’s eyes immediately widened. “Is it really?”

Jeneth nodded. “It started moving just before I left,” he said, “and moving a lot. From the looks of it—” He paused as a momentary thrill stole his breath. “—it may very well hatch tonight.”

The two left with no further delay, hurrying toward the cavern where Jeneth and Azvida lived. They’d anticipated this event with great enthusiasm, for it’d been quite long in the making. For years, Jeneth and Azvida had tried to conceive an egg, to no avail. They were on the verge of losing hope of ever having a child together when, to their immense joy and relief, they finally succeeded. Now, months later, the baby that they’d so dearly wished for would arrive at long last.

As soon as the barrier was in sight, Jeneth removed it with unprecedented speed. Once inside, he and Solonn rushed past the main cavern and into the small chamber where the egg sat, watched by its mother.

Just as Jeneth had said, the egg was much more active now than when Solonn had last laid eyes on it. It was shaking so wildly that if it weren’t for the ring of ice and packed snow that Azvida had mindfully raised around it, it could have easily just rolled right into the nearest wall.

Azvida didn’t look away from the egg for even a second, but she caught Jeneth and Solonn entering the room in the edge of her vision and smiled at them.

“Any moment now,” she all but whispered, her eyes bright, “any moment…”

Solonn and Jeneth sat down, and together the three glalie eagerly waited for the egg to hatch. It kept on shaking… but as minute after minute passed, the shell remained intact.

Solonn’s brows drew together in worry. While he’d never watched an egg hatch before, he was sure the baby shouldn’t be struggling for this long before breaking free. He glanced at the others, and the troubled looks on their faces only reinforced that concern.

“This isn’t right…” Azvida’s voiced was strained. “This isn’t right at all… Dear gods, I don’t think they can get out!”

Jeneth rose from the floor and came to hover directly above the egg. He swallowed nervously. “We’re going to have to help them out, then,” he said tensely.

Fleeting apprehension crossed Azvida’s face at the thought of what Jeneth seemed to be proposing, but then she gave a quick nod of agreement. “All right,” she said. “Be quick, but please be careful.”

“Don’t worry,” Jeneth assured her. He leaned toward the egg, his jaws parting. Azvida and Solonn watched him with bated breath, hoping this ordeal was soon to end.

But before Jeneth could lay a single tooth upon the egg, it blew apart right in his face.

Azvida cried out and turned away in an instant. Jeneth went reeling backwards, spitting fragments of eggshell from his mouth and shaking them from his face. Solonn shut his eyes and raised a protect shield around himself. For seconds after, the three remained frozen in shock, unable to think, forgetting to breathe. Finally, fearfully, they dared to look at the nest of ice and snow where the egg had been.

What they found there calmed their initial shock somewhat, but only increased their bewilderment. There, amid the debris of his explosive birth, a newborn male sat completely unscathed, nibbling daintily and serenely at a handful of the surrounding snow as though nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

The three glalie could only stare dumbfounded at him for a long moment, gathering their wits, still shaken after what they’d just witnessed. Finally, “Gods… what in the hell just happened?” Jeneth managed.

“No idea,” Azvida responded breathlessly, her eyes still wide with disbelief, her brow still knitted in confusion and concern. “None whatsoever… I just hope he’s really going to be all right now…”

The three glalie kept a long watch over the newborn to make sure of just that. By the evening’s end, they were certain that there was no further strangeness in store for the child, and with that reassurance, they could finally, truly take joy in their new arrival. Before long, they chose a name for him, officially welcoming Jeneth Marasahn Zgil-Al into the family.

* * *

Through the years that followed, life became richer and easier for the family. Eventually, venturing out into public became less of an ordeal for Jeneth and Azvida; the hostility and blame toward the latter for Grosh showing up finally seemed to have faded into the past. Consequently, young Jeneth, or simply Jen as he liked to be called, was accepted into his place in society readily. Now old enough to spend time in the snowgrounds, he’d had decent success in making friends.

As for Solonn, his appearance still inspired a little mistrust and discomfort here and there. Not that it upset him too much, though. He was just as content with the company of his family and Zilag’s as he’d been for years now. As long as he had their support, he felt no real need for the approval of strangers.

Though he usually paid his friends and family visits rather than the other way around—their homes, designed for multiple inhabitants, were better suited for entertaining guests—one or more of them occasionally showed up at his figurative door. Such was the case today, when the tapping of a horn against the barrier outside pulled his attention away from the helix he’d conjured in the middle of the floor. He dissipated the barrier and found Azvida and Jeneth hovering there, with Jen standing in front of them and looking a bit antsy.

“Ah, hi!” Solonn greeted them warmly. “Come on in.” He cleared the floor to make more room for his three visitors, taking a quick mental snapshot of the ice sculptures in hopes of being able to replicate them once his company left, and moved aside to let the three in.

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Azvida told him with a hint of guilt at the trouble he’d already gone to for their sake. “We’re just dropping Jen off here, if that’s all right—he wants to be taken to the snowgrounds later, but he said he wanted to come see you first.”

“We were hoping you could take him there when he’s ready so that your mother and I can go ahead to the temple. We’re wanting to get there as soon as possible so that we can get back and… try again,” Jeneth said, lowering his voice on those last two words.

Solonn knew exactly what Jeneth meant by that, and he did an admirable job of keeping his unease off his face. Jeneth and Azvida wanted another child, but they’d had even less luck thus far than they’d had the first time around. No doubt they were heading to the temple to offer more prayers for things to change for the better.

“Sure, that’s fine with me,” Solonn said. He’d had plans to go up and spend some time with his father, but that could wait, especially since it seemed like it wouldn’t have to wait for long. “I suppose you’ll be picking him up from there later?”

Azvida nodded. She then looked down toward Jen. “Be good, all right?” she instructed him. “Remember: I’ll know if you don’t.”

Jen gave her a slightly nervous look. “Okay,” he said. “Bye!”

“Bye,” his parents returned in near-unison, smiling, then departed.

Jen entered the living room proper then, and Solonn restored the ice barrier behind him. The snorunt went to a spot just a little off the center of the room, stopped there, and looked for a moment like he was going to sit down, but he paused in mid-motion and straightened his posture once more.

Solonn noticed a distinct look of unease on the snorunt’s face, which brought a concerned frown to his own. “Is something the matter?” he asked. He wondered if Jen had figured out that his parents were trying to have another child. Maybe the snorunt felt like they were replacing him or something. Maybe he just wanted Solonn to assure him that getting a younger sibling wasn’t the end of the world after all.

Or maybe Jen had mentioned little siblings to his friends, the subject of where such things came from had come up, and he was seeking confirmation from Solonn regarding that matter. Solonn sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case.

“Well… I need you to do something,” Jen said.

Solonn looked at him with a mixture of puzzlement and relief; somehow Jen’s response didn’t seem like anything that would lead into having to explain eggs or anything of that nature. Where it was leading, he couldn’t guess. “And what might that be?”

“It is,” Jen insisted. He shook his head. “Why? Why’d I say that?” he muttered to himself, turning and beginning to pace as he spoke.

Solonn briefly watched the snorunt move in a small figure-eight in the middle of the room. “Well, what did you say?” he asked gently. “And to whom?”

Jen let out a loud, annoyed sigh, though Solonn suspected Jen was directing it toward himself. The snorunt finally got himself to hold still. “I told my friends I could make stuff with ice. You know, like you do. And they said ‘prove it’, and I said I would next time I went over there.” He took another deep breath, then forced himself to look Solonn in the eyes as steadily as possible. “So I need you to come with me and do it for me. Like… hide outside and make things made out of ice appear in there so it’ll look like I’m doing it.”

There was a hint of desperation in Jen’s voice that suggested he didn’t really have much faith in that plan. Solonn had none in it whatsoever. “Jen… sooner or later, they’re going to figure out you didn’t mean it about being able to do that… I can’t be there every time.”

Jen finally sat down, looking only a little disappointed; he’d expected that sort of answer, really. “And you can’t just show me how to do it,” he said. He’d already learned long ago that that sort of control over ice was simply beyond a snorunt’s abilities.

Solonn gave a faint, sad sort of smile. “I’m afraid not. I’d be glad to if I could, but… well, it’s just something you have to find for yourself by really connecting to your element. You’ll be able to do that when you evolve. You’ll know when you feel that connection. There’s nothing else like it.”

“What’s it like?” Jen asked, tilting his head slightly in curiosity.

“It’s…” Solonn began, but just like that, he was at a loss for words. He tried to describe it, calling on memories of past experiences with it… and as he did, he fell into the sensation in the present. The ice on the floor in front of him answered the unintentional call of those straying thoughts, snaking upward and resuming the helical shape it had held before, with wispy little projections growing from the main body of the sculpture and another, smaller helix rising up through its center.

Solonn only realized after the fact that he’d fallen silent and shut his eyes; when he opened them, he saw what he’d done and gave a faint, apologetic laugh for letting himself get carried away. “Whoops,” he said. “Anyway… there’s really no way I could explain what it’s like or how wonderful it is,” he admitted. “And that feeling, that connection… that’s where this comes from,” he told Jen, nodding toward the ice sculpture. “Whenever you connect to the element, this is what can happen.” Maybe this display had specifically happened because the experience of being one with the element was so hard to put into words, Solonn mused silently. Maybe this was the only way he or anyone else of his kind could adequately express that connection.

Jen leveled a stare at the ice formation in front of him for a moment. Then he screwed his eyes shut, his brow creasing in concentration. A couple of seconds later, his eyes popped open again. “…Hey, I think it moved!” he said, gesturing toward one of the thin branches growing out of the main helix.

It hadn’t moved an inch, but Solonn didn’t have the heart to correct him too bluntly. “Well, one day, you won’t just think you made it move. You’ll know when you have.”

Jen made a frustrated noise. “I don’t want to have to wait to evolve to do it, though.” His eyes shifted up to Solonn’s again. “Hey…” he began slowly. “Maybe… maybe I could go ahead and evolve right now. And maybe you could help me.”

“Not unless you want to risk losing your mind,” Solonn told him, his tone serious. “And at your age, I think there’s next to no chance that wouldn’t happen. Evolving brings a kind of power we have to be ready for, and that takes time. If you get it before you’re ready, you could go insane. You wouldn’t even be able to think of making anything out of ice. And if I helped you go insane, Mother and Jeneth would never forgive me. And I’d never forgive myself.”

The light in Jen’s eyes flickered, fading slightly. Whether or not he believed Solonn’s claims, the glalie couldn’t tell for certain, but at least Jen didn’t seem inclined to take the risk. The snorunt sighed once again. “What am I gonna do, then?” he asked.

“Well… all you really can do is tell the truth. Again, they’re going to figure it out sooner or later—you should really probably just get it over with.”

“They probably won’t,” Solonn tried to assure him. “They’d better not, anyway. If they even so much as look at you like they want to, they’ll have Mother and Jeneth to deal with.”

That they would, and as he thought about it, he wondered if it might be prudent for Jen to tell Azvida and Jeneth about the situation before confronting the other kids so that his parents could defuse any potential problems before they arose. He considered not taking Jen to the snowgrounds at all and just watching him until his parents could return, postponing the trip into Shoal Cave if he had to.

That would mean Azvida and Jeneth would come back here after failing to find Jen at the snowgrounds, he realized as that course of action occurred to him. He could already picture Jeneth’s disapproving stare, could already hear Azvida chewing him out for giving them a scare, however brief. But he figured—or at least hoped—that things would be fine once he got the chance to explain everything.

So, “Maybe it would be a good idea to talk with Mother and Jeneth about this before you go back to the snowgrounds,” he suggested. “Would you rather just stay here and wait for them to come back?”

Jen considered this for a few moments. Then he shuddered. “I don’t want Mom and Dad to find out,” he said finally. “I’m more scared of Mom than I am of the other kids.” He stood then, turning toward the exit. “Come on… let’s go,” he said with resignation in his voice.

“All right,” Solonn said. He rose, unblocked the exit, and escorted Jen out, sealing the cavern off as they left it behind. His half-brother stayed silent all the way to the snowgrounds; Solonn didn’t try to provoke him into conversation, letting the snorunt focus on steeling himself for his confession.

He lingered at the entrance to the snowgrounds after bidding Jen goodbye; it seemed prudent to make sure the other children didn’t react too harshly to what Jen had to tell them. He still didn’t really anticipate too much trouble, but he was compelled nonetheless to stick around long enough to confirm that things would be all right. At the very least, he figured he should be there in a show of support for his half-brother.

Fortunately, the other kids seemed to take the news well enough. There were a couple of groans from among the small crowd in response to it, but they only sounded disappointed, not angry. Solonn heard “I knew it!” out of one of the snorunt and started to suspect that most of Jen’s friends shared a similar sentiment.

He saw some of their eyes find him, regarding him uneasily. He didn’t like it when children looked at him with anything at all like fear, and he frowned in regret. The snorunt watching him turned away quickly.

Jen met his gaze then, and Solonn gave him a reassuring nod. It’ll be all right, he told Jen silently, and as if to confirm that thought, the snorunt changed the subject, carrying on happily. Smiling, Solonn turned and went on his way.

Rather than head back home, he decided to go ahead and visit Grosh. Solonn knew the route that led to the chasm by heart at this point; things rarely changed along that path, and when they did, they were only minor changes.

Therefore it was a surprise, to say the very least, to find his usual path blocked by an unusual obstacle just as he was approaching the passageway out of the border-cavern—one that literally appeared out of thin air right in front of him. With virtually no time to react to it, momentarily blinded by its accompanying burst of light, Solonn collided face-first with the thing with a dull whumpf; sending whatever it was tumbling backward with a strange groaning noise.

Solonn regained his wits and vision fairly quickly after the collision. He looked off to the left, following the source of the odd sound, and what he saw surprised him greatly. Uttering a long string of rattling speech to themself, a claydol pitched and wobbled there as they tried to stabilize themself in midair.

“…Oth?” Solonn said, barely able to believe his eyes.

The claydol finally managed to right themself; once they did, they turned to face Solonn. <Oh, hello, Solonn,> they said, confirming his guess. <I am glad to have found you so quickly; I doubt I could have tracked you down any more successfully than I had done the times before. My apologies for my rather… awkward arrival,> Oth added.

“No harm done,” Solonn assured them. “…The times before?” he then echoed as the words registered with a delay.

Oth gave one of their pseudo-nods. <I have returned to this cavern many times since our parting. However, you were not in this vicinity on any of those occasions, and I regrettably had to terminate my search each of those times before I could find you… It shames me somewhat to admit this, but I did so because I could not tolerate the cold of these caverns for very long.>

“There’s no need to apologize for that; it’s not something you can help, after all. Anyway, since I’m here, I can try to keep you warm,” Solonn said.

<There is no need for you to try,> Oth said. <You are actually doing quite a good job of keeping the effects of this environment upon me at bay even as we speak.>

Solonn was momentarily surprised, but quickly realized that he’d probably employed this type of subconscious elemental control many times in the past. But even knowing that he didn’t have to make an effort to protect the claydol, he suspected he’d still feel compelled sometimes to make certain Oth was adequately guarded against their surroundings.

“So, then. How have you been?” Solonn asked amiably. “And what about the others?”

<Ultimately, we all simply had our own paths to take,> Oth said. <Many of those in Lilycove wished to return to where they had lived prior to being acquired by humans, and Brett was among them. Aaron met another of his kind and chose to go with her to her home in the southwest. Only Raze chose to stay in Lilycove—I doubt she could ever bear to leave that place,> they said, their voice lowering on that statement.

Understanding shone through Solonn’s eyes at this; Lilycove was surely a place of tremendous sentimental importance to the skarmory. She’d been born there, after all, and she’d forged countless memories with the human she’d grown up with there. That city and those memories might be all she had left to hold on to of Morgan and the past.

<Brett, Aaron and Raze have all dedicated themselves to founding and raising families since you and I last spoke,> Oth went on. <Aaron and his mate Rhasth have had a young son together, Brett and Fiela have had two litters, and Raze and Eisen are awaiting the hatching of their first clutch of eggs.>

The thought of his old friends with children was one at which Solonn couldn’t help but chuckle. He was glad to know some kind of joy had befallen them since the sorrow that had hung over his last moments with them.

<As for Sei and I,> Oth said, <we were part of a team that served the effort to help people rebuild their lives after the day the humans died out. We freed those trapped in capture and storage devices, relocated those who needed it, helped those who did not know how to live without humans to fend for themselves capably and peacefully, and did what we could to dispel the chaos wherever they failed.

<Our work continued for quite some time after the human tragedy,> they went on. <It was not only our part of the world that was affected, but every part. Even to the best of our hopes and efforts to find otherwise… the unfortunate truth is that nothing remains of the human species. Nothing at all.>

There was a prolonged, heavy silence in the wake of those words. Solonn was almost at a loss for thought—he, like many, had feared that the human tragedy might have been global in its scope, but to actually hear it aloud, confirmed… “Did you or anyone else ever find out what really happened to them?” he managed at length. “Do you know what caused it?”

<Sadly, no,> Oth replied. <Though many have tried, none have succeeded in determining the origin of the Extinction.>

Another somber pause hung over the two before Oth resumed their account of what they, Sei, and the rest of those they’d worked with had done over the past few years. <Eventually, as things began to stabilize in much of the world, most of us finally went back to our own lives, but Sei… She is still out there, doing anything and everything she can for anyone who appears to have need of her. I think she may never consider her work to be done.>

“Hmm,” was all Solonn could say to that, nodding. Knowing Sei as he did, he wasn’t surprised. “And what have you been up to since your work was finished?”

<Not much. In addition to trying to contact you, I have been checking in on the others from time to time, making sure they were doing well and usually staying with them for a short time before moving on. Other than that… largely, I have simply roamed during these years. I have no single place to stay now, really…>

Oth fell silent, and a strange, faraway look entered their many eyes. The claydol seemed to have arrived at a difficult subject, and Solonn felt sorry for anything he might have said to lead them there, averting his gaze self-consciously. Oth seemed to recognize the awkwardness that had fallen over the situation and moved to remedy it at once. <So, what has been going on in your life?> they asked, changing the subject.

“Well, truth be told, I haven’t really been up to anything interesting,” Solonn admitted lightheartedly. “And I haven’t got any kids of my own… but my mother found a new mate, and they’ve had a son together.”

<Oh? How fortunate for them!> Oth said.

Solonn smiled. “Indeed. And also… you might find this hard to believe, but… my father returned.”

All of the claydol’s eyes blinked in unison. <Your father?> they said incredulously. <I did not know that he still lived!>

“Neither did I, for a while,” Solonn said. “But he is indeed very much alive. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to visit him when you arrived.”

A series of peculiar little clicking sounds issued from the claydol, a sound Solonn had long known to be their form of laughter. <Well, I am certainly glad to learn that he is alive and well,> Oth said warmly. <I wonder…> they then added, <do you suppose I could accompany you? I am rather interested in meeting your family, and now that I have a chance to spend some time with you after so long, I am… not exactly eager to bid you farewell anytime soon…> There was something in their tone that suggested a bit of embarrassment on their part, as if they were worried they might be imposing themself on Solonn.

But Solonn had no problem whatsoever with letting Oth tag along. He was equally interested in prolonging their reunion, and he didn’t want to leave Oth behind with no other option in the cold caverns but to go back where they’d come from. “Sure, of course you may,” he said.

<Thank you,> Oth said gratefully.

“No problem,” Solonn responded as he set off once again, with the claydol following close behind. “Now, hopefully you won’t be too shocked when you see him…”

Side by side, Azvida and Jeneth entered the temple. They closed off the entrance behind them, then descended into the sacred chamber, moving silently through a small crowd as they sought a nice place to sit.

Those who were already gathered there barely noticed their arrival. People visited the temple as they pleased or needed; it was hard to find a time when there wasn’t someone coming or going through that entrance. And most of the glalie there were too engrossed in their meditations to notice much else anyway.

The couple soon found an empty spot near the front of the chamber and gladly sat down there. Before them, three tall, tapering ice spires rose from the floor in a triangular formation. Their purpose was to focus prayers unto the heavens and channel divine energy into the worshipers. A solid, triple-diamond pattern was etched into a flattened facet on the front of each of the spires.

Azvida and Jeneth looked at them for a moment, then exchanged optimistic smiles before closing their eyes, doing nothing more for a while other than dwelling on the sacredness of this place. They silently offered reverence and praise unto the gods, then sent their gratitude for their prior blessings and appealed to them for more, dearly hoping their prayers for another child would be answered at last.

At the opposite end of the temple, the barrier vanished and reappeared once again, this time admitting a somewhat larger group of new arrivals than usual. The people in the temple paid them no more mind than they’d paid the couple who’d come in just minutes ago. The newly arrived glalie moved into the crowd, one of them making it up front to the altar, taking his place next to Azvida and Jeneth. Soon, all of them were situated, melding seamlessly into the tranquility of the scene as if they’d always been there.

Then that tranquility met an abrupt end.

There was a sound like an enormous peal of thunder: the signature of several nhaza released in unison. The worshipers were snapped violently out of their reveries, and their cries of shock and terror joined the echoes of the blasts when they saw the insensible bodies on the floor. They realized just as quickly that their nightmare had only just begun.

The first thing Azvida saw as she cast a panicked glance about was Jeneth lying motionless by her side, seemingly unconscious. The next thing she saw, in nearly the same instant, was a gray-and-white blur smashing into him from out of nowhere. She reeled backward automatically with a wordless cry of surprise as the glalie hurtled past her, driving Jeneth along with them. There was a sickening crunch as they met the wall, and her eyes darted toward the sound.

Whoever had just attacked her mate was nowhere in sight, but there was Jeneth, propped against the wall at an awkward angle. Oblivious to the crushing blow he’d just been dealt, he wore a peaceful expression. It contrasted harshly with the rapidly spreading pool of nearly colorless, evanescing blood that surrounded him.

Azvida gave a strangled wail as she rushed toward him, desperate to find some sign of life within him. Before she could reach him, his attacker swung back around, turning on her this time. She caught sight of the charging glalie in the corner of her eye, raised a protect aura, and dodged out of the way a split-second before he could strike, veering wildly toward the center of the chamber—but not into safety.

In an instant, Azvida was surrounded by chaos. All around her, jaws snapped, horns slashed and stabbed, and bodies collided with brutal force. The sounds of shattering armor and attempted nhaza filled the air along with furious hisses and cries of fear and agony.

Azvida regained her bearings and looked back toward Jeneth, her heart catching sickeningly in her throat—she was sure he was gone now. He wasn’t alone, either; several others had been smashed against walls, gored, or both. A powerful wave of sorrow and confusion welled up within her, and she couldn’t help averting her eyes from the carnage. In all her time in Virc-Dho, she’d never seen such violence among her people, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine why it was happening now. All that she was sure of was that it shouldn’t be. This once sacred place had become a killing field, desecrated with the blood of innocents, and more were still in great danger, herself included.

She was struck the moment her shield fell; she shrieked in pain as something gouged a burning path across her back, smashing through the sparse armor there. A response came from some long-dormant corner of her memory: she abruptly turned toward her assailant in a violent, wrenching motion, her left horn raking across his eyes. He screamed, only to be silenced when Azvida rammed into him, knocking the breath out of him and shoving him away.

Her eyes swept the chamber, anticipating another attack at any moment, from any direction. In doing so, she saw just how one-sided the battle was. There were clear aggressors, glalie who attacked ruthlessly and relentlessly with great skill. Most of the rest, while earnestly fighting back the best they could, were just painfully outclassed by the other side. Others, having realized they were no real match for the enemy, didn’t fight at all; they just tried to keep their protect shields up and avoid the onslaught.

The fact of the matter was that most of them had nothing in the way of battle experience beyond friendly matches, and there was a significant difference between merely sparring and actually fighting for one’s life. Meanwhile Azvida knew the face of mortal combat all too well. She’d hoped she’d never have to fight that way again, but when their enemy desired nothing less than to slaughter them, she had little choice.

With no further hesitation, she charged into the fray. Wherever she saw someone being overpowered by one of the aggressors, she aided them against the enemy; wherever she saw someone cornered or otherwise helpless against an oncoming threat, she rushed in to intercept the attacker. Knowing that nhaza were unreliable in such a chaotic situation, especially against such skilled opponents, she instead relied solely on physical attacks, her skull bashing into the enemies like a battering ram, her horns seeking the vulnerable eyes and the gaps in the armor of her targets.

Her enemies left gashes and punctures all over her hide whenever her protect aura failed, but she paid no mind to her own pain. Instead she focused on restoring her armor wherever it took damage, glazing over her wounds with ice, and defending her fellow people as well as she could.

But the fact remained that the enemies were all just as skilled as she was, if not moreso. She couldn’t truly defend against them on her own; despite her best efforts, her people were still falling.

Still, she refused to just give up and let them be massacred. She hurtled toward an enemy glalie who was bearing down on a vulnerable, wounded person lying near the altar—only to pass right through the attacker. She cursed aloud—that was the most convincing double team illusion she’d ever seen.

She immediately sought its source, anticipating an ambush—but to her surprise, that ambush came from the “helpless” glalie she’d moved to save, who grinned wickedly as she instantly rose and headbutted Azvida. In nearly the same instant, the glalie responsible for the illusion struck Azvida from the other side. Azvida crashed painfully into one of the altar’s spires; she barely managed to get out of the way before a large chunk of it broke off and fell to the floor.

As she hurried away from the broken altar, shoving her way through the crowd, she saw that a couple of glalie had slipped away from the fight and made their way to the exit. She felt a small surge of hope at the sight, hope that those people might escape with their lives—and better still, they might bring back reinforcements.

But that hope was quickly dashed as moments went by with the barrier remaining stubbornly in place. Desperately, the glalie gathered there tried to simply bash through the wall of ice, but to no avail. As if it were alive, it automatically repaired any damage dealt to it.

“It won’t open!” one of the glalie at the exit shouted. “Why won’t it open?”

An answer came to Azvida right away, and her heart sank. The enemies were exercising control over the barrier. They now outnumbered the defenders, and so their power to keep it closed was too strong for the survivors to overcome, even as a whole.

If more glalie arrived at the other side of the barrier, they might be able to overpower the attackers and enter the temple. If the Security Guild’s lair weren’t located on the other side of the warren, such help would have surely come by now. They could still be summoned if anyone came close enough to the temple to hear the commotion inside, but as far as she could tell, no one had.

And then she got an idea. One of the skills the humans had taught her could draw that badly needed attention—the entire warren might notice it, in fact. It had seemed too impractical to use in combat, pushed to the back of her mind in favor of techniques with less risk of collateral damage. Its potential beyond simple offense hadn’t occurred to her; she inwardly cursed herself for not thinking of this course of action sooner.

There was no guarantee that it would work. Maybe no one would arrive in time; maybe not enough would. Maybe the wrong people would arrive first, though that might happen anyway. Perhaps, the terrible thought occurred to her, similar or even greater violence had erupted elsewhere in the warren, too. In that case, the aid needed in the temple might be wrapped up in trouble elsewhere. But Azvida had to give it a try. It might be the only hope left for those trapped with her—or, at least, for those who’d brought this misery upon them to get what they deserved for it.

With no further delay, she brought up a protect shield so that no one and nothing could disrupt what she was about to do—and just in time, as the two glalie who’d tricked her came back around for another strike then, accompanied by a third this time.

“Everyone!” she shouted as loudly as her partially-spent strength would allow, unfazed as each of the three assailants’ attacks hit her shield in unison. She knew her next actions could hurt the innocents just as badly as it could hurt the other side. Her people needed fair warning. “Protect or get as high off the ground as you can now!”

Deep blue light blossomed around nearly every living person in the temple, while others pushed their levitation to the limit, rising as high off of the floor as their heavy bodies could manage. The enemies naturally did likewise, and their attention was now directed squarely and entirely toward Azvida. They knew she was up to something and weren’t interested in letting her pull it off. In a single moment, the enemies amassed and moved toward her in unison.

But just before they could reach her, she surged up into the air, well above her normal hovering height. She came crashing back down just as quickly and released a powerful discharge of ground-type energy into the floor beneath her, sending shockwaves out from the impact site. The ice glazing the walls, floor, and ceiling filled with fissures and then exploded in a burst of frozen shrapnel; what remained of the altar came crashing down; and the barrier shattered, only to return in virtually the same instant. Her shield fell a split-second after the earthquake, and as the attackers fell upon her, she could only hope her call for help would be answered in time.

* * *

Deep, rattling echoes filled the surrounding chamber: the sonic companion to Oth’s account of their ultra rank contest experience. Grosh occasionally interrupted with questions or comments, but Solonn, having heard the story several times before, kept contentedly silent as he sat there with his friend and his father.

As the claydol was nearing the end, something strange distracted Solonn: a quick and rather small tremor that rippled through the stone floor beneath him. He wondered if it might have been a small earthquake, something he’d never experienced before.

“Did anyone else feel that?” he asked, turning his gaze toward the others. When it fell upon Grosh, Solonn found the steelix wearing a distinctly troubled expression, and his own changed to match it at once.

<I did not feel anything… What is the matter?> Oth asked as they noticed the others’ worried looks.

“There was an earthquake a moment ago,” Solonn answered, “albeit a small one.”

<Oh… Are earthquakes uncommon in this area?>

“As long as I’ve known this place, yes, they are.” Grosh said. There was tension in his tone and the set of his jaw. He looked down at Solonn. “I think that came from the warren—and I think it was your mother’s doing,” he told him quietly, at which his son’s eyes widened in surprise. “And I don’t imagine she’d have used that unless she was in major trouble.”

“Oh dear gods…” Solonn said almost breathlessly as he rose from the floor, instantly and immensely concerned for not only Azvida but Jeneth, as well—the latter was surely still with her. He heard an untranslated noise from the claydol to his right, a possible echo of their sentiments. A number of the dangerous scenarios that Azvida and Jeneth could be facing raced through his mind in rapid sequence, quickening his pulse and making fear settle heavily in the pit of his stomach.

“She’s a good fighter,” Grosh went on, “and I’m sure she can hold her own in a lot of situations, but if she’s found it necessary to resort to that…” He shook his head. “She might be overwhelmed,” he worried aloud, and his eyes darted fretfully toward the mouth of his cavern and the shaft leading up out of it. “We’ve got to try and reach her,” he decided firmly. “We don’t know what’s going on, how much time she has… I can’t stand the thought of not being there for her if she’s in need…”

“Oth can close most of the distance between here and the warren,” Solonn said, trying to think as fast as he could. “They can get us to the border-cavern at the very least—and if they can do what I think they can, they can get us where we probably need to go.” Some psychics, like Sei, could extract memories of destinations from others’ minds and thereby teleport to places they’d never personally been. But Oth wasn’t as powerful as Sei; there was a chance they couldn’t do such a thing.

Solonn hoped dearly that they could. Grosh was right—there was no telling how much time Azvida and Jeneth had. Every second counted, and being able to warp instantly to their aid could make all the difference in how they fared.

<I can,> Oth said, correctly interpreting Solonn’s statement. <If you will allow me to form a temporary link with your mind, I can take you to any place you can recall.>

Solonn was ordinarily somewhat averse to letting others into his mind, even friends. But such reservations couldn’t have been further from his mind at the present. “Please do,” he consented readily.

Oth brought themself directly before him. All but the foremost of their eyes closed as the claydol focused their power through it. There was no visible beam this time, but Solonn could still feel the distinct sensation of a foreign presence entering his mind.

At the same time, he felt an equally foreign mindscape open up on the outskirts of his perception—Oth was forming a two-way connection, a true link. Solonn hoped he wouldn’t accidentally pick up on any of the claydol’s thoughts, but those concerns kept to the back of his mind.

To his immense gratitude, Oth was finished in no time. <Just think of where you wish to go, and I will transport us there instantly,> Oth told him.

“There’s just one problem,” Grosh pointed out, his frown deepening further. “We don’t know where she is, exactly. We could lose precious time trying to find her.”

“I think I know where she is,” Solonn said. She and Jeneth were probably still at the temple… either that, or they were on their way home. He didn’t think they’d be en route to the snowgrounds just yet, let alone would they have arrived there—he hoped to all gods that they hadn’t, at least. The thought of any children—and especially Jen—being involved in whatever had befallen Azvida and Jeneth only worsened the chilling, sickening fear roiling inside him. “She’s probably at the temple with Jeneth, but if she’s not… well, I think I know where else they might be. We’re just going to have to move as quickly as possible,” Solonn said, trying with little success not to think about what might happen if they didn’t get to them in time. “If we don’t find them in the temple, we’ll move on immediately.”

The others gave quick nods of agreement, and with that, Solonn focused as sharply as he could on visualizing the temple, hoping the swarm of other thoughts and worries in his mind wouldn’t get in Oth’s way.

Luckily, Oth got the message with no trouble at all. <Draw as close to me as you can,> they advised Grosh. The steelix did so at once, coiling loosely around Solonn and Oth. A teleportation field promptly formed around the three, removing them from Grosh’s home.

In virtually the same instant, they rematerialized in the temple, and they gasped and cried out in shock at once. The battle within was still raging despite how many people had already fallen. It was a far more brutal scene than any of the three who’d just arrived had expected.

Their entrance didn’t go unnoticed; several pairs of eyes immediately shifted toward the sudden flash of golden light at the exit, and those eyes widened enormously at what they found there.

A fearful voice cut through the din. “Ler Vhossilliar!” the voice shouted, announcing the arrival of the steelix who’d just appeared on the scene. “Retreat, retreat!”

At his call, a number of the glalie broke away from the fight and surged toward the exit as one, many of them summoning shields around themselves as they did so. The barrier promptly vanished for the small swarm of glalie as they fled the temple as fast as they could. The three newly arrived pokémon they rushed past were still in too much shock at what they’d found to realize why they should intercept them.

Following the departure of those glalie, the scene instantly changed. The fighting had ceased; most of those who were left in the temple were lying on the floor, unconscious or worse, while the few who remained awake hovered warily in place, their darting, fearful glances telling that they didn’t dare believe that the violence had subsided.

Solonn looked upon the scene laid out before him, almost paralyzed with horror and disbelief—he’d never beheld such carnage in his life. With an immense effort, he forced himself forward, shuddering hard as he and the others proceeded into the main chamber of the ruined temple, trying not to faint. A thin, pale, silvery mist hung low in the air, vapors from the blood of the fallen; his stomach lurched hard at the thought that he was actually breathing it.

He spotted a small cluster of relatively unharmed-looking glalie huddling together and moving away from him and the strange, foreign creatures who accompanied him. They froze in place when they realized that the three had spotted them. Solonn noticed at once that Azvida and Jeneth weren’t among them, as did the others; Grosh broke away and immediately began searching the chamber on his own, a couple of his spiked segments rotating fretfully all the while.

Solonn stopped advancing, hoping to seem less threatening to the fearful survivors. But he kept his gaze locked onto them, the troubled question plain in his eyes even before he spoke it aloud.

“Where are they?” he asked, his throat dry and constricted with fear. “Where are Azvida Zgil-Al and Jeneth Avasi-Ra; do you know?” He could only hope one of them knew who they were and could recognize them.

One of the survivors nodded almost imperceptibly. Her eyes shifted to her right—just as a bloodcurdling howl sounded from that very direction.

Solonn’s heart seized at the sound, and he rushed toward it right away—only to be caught short by familiar, yellow light. When it vanished, he and Oth were both directly beside Grosh. And there before them…

Azvida lay face-up, trembling uncontrollably and staring sightlessly into space through fluttering, ruined eyes. It was hard to tell just how badly she was suffering, but the fact that she was hurting was all too clear. Her breathing was ragged, horribly labored. Her armor was deformed, hastily shifted to patch over her many wounds. She must have lost the strength to do so at some point; some of them were still exposed, still bleeding into the already considerable pool that surrounded her. Solonn mindfully took over for her, a wordless, strangled sound of horror escaping him as he glazed over the open wounds as quickly as he could.

“Mother…” he all but whispered, his voice catching in his throat. “Dear gods, what… what have they done to you?”

Azvida stirred slightly where she lay, trying but failing to turn toward his voice. “…Solonn?” she managed in a brittle, almost breathless tone, all too clearly struggling to speak. “Are you… here?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m here… and so is Father.”

Something of a sad, wistful gratitude managed to show through Azvida’s marred features at that. “Thank you…” She gave a frail, shuddering sigh. “Wish I… could see you…”

The failing light in her eyes flickered erratically as she unknowingly met her son’s gaze. A wrenching pang seized his heart at the almost colorless rivulets of blood that flowed from the wounds closest to her eyes… it looked to as though she were crying, shedding impossible tears.

“Who did this to you?” Grosh asked, anguish and fury plain in his voice. “I won’t let them get away with it, I swear…”

“Don’t know,” Azvida responded very weakly. “There were… so many…”

“Mother… where is Jeneth?” Solonn asked hoarsely. “Is he… ?” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

Azvida couldn’t bring herself to answer, at least not in words. Her face contorted, and a frail sob escaped her.

Solonn’s heart sank even further, and he drew in his next breath as a shuddering, pained hiss. “Oh… oh gods…” he said near-voicelessly, and started to tremble. The ice that had fallen from the walls and ceiling surged back up to surround the four of them, jagged projections bursting out of it and starting to twist and writhe at Solonn’s unconscious command. It was hard enough to accept that Jeneth was gone. The anguish on his mother’s face only made it hurt all the more.

He didn’t want that bereavement to be one of the last things she ever knew—and he had no intentions of letting it. Her potential salvation hovered right at his side.

“Oth,” Solonn spoke up. The claydol made a faint, acknowledging noise. “I know a place where they might be able to save her,” Solonn told them, and he conjured up thoughts and images of the Haven. He could only hope someone still worked there, that the local pokémon hadn’t decided to abandon the old Convergence lifestyle after the Extinction.

Seconds passed, but the scenery didn’t change. Solonn feared that Oth might have failed to receive the images, and so he tried to focus harder on the Haven. It was far easier said than done with such a terrible scene surrounding him, with one loved one already lost and another bleeding before him.

He noticed that Oth had circled around Azvida to hover at her opposite side, and at that very instant, he saw a pale red beam project silently from the claydol’s foremost eye and strike his mother, seemingly to no effect.

“What are you doing?” he demanded urgently. “We have to get her to the hospital right away!”

Oth didn’t answer. They wordlessly widened their red beam and swept it over the wounded glalie before them, passing it over her twice. The beam then vanished, and Oth gave a long, low, almost toneless rattling, a sigh without breath.

<I am so sorry,> the claydol said somberly.

“What is it?” Solonn asked, dreading the answer.

There was the slightest pause as Oth struggled to answer. <I am afraid that in her current state, she would not survive rematerialization,> they said regretfully. <She cannot be teleported.> Their head lowered, their many eyes closing in earnest guilt. <I am so sorry…> they said again.

None of the three gathered at Azvida’s side wanted to believe what was happening, but with that, the finality of the matter was undeniable no matter how dearly and desperately they wished otherwise. Solonn looked upon his mother with a profound apology in his eyes, hating the hopelessness of the situation.

“I just wish I could do something about this,” he lamented quietly, “anything at all…”

Azvida drew the deepest breath she could manage, letting it out on a soft, hoarse note. Her jaws parted and she tried to speak, but a powerful tremor wracked her broken body, stealing her breath before she could give it words. When it subsided, the lines of her face tightened briefly and a small, pained sound escaped her, almost a whimper.

“Just…” she finally resumed with immense difficulty, her words more exhaled than truly spoken. “Please… just stay safe.”

Her only acknowledgment was the slightest nod and something whispered that came short of words. She gave another great shudder, one that seemed unwilling to relent… but then she finally fell still. The light in her eyes faded out, and her life went with it.

For one last, precious ghost of a moment, she still lived in the minds of her observers. Then the truth fell upon them all, and deep inside, Solonn felt something seem to tear itself wide open. The bereavement already aching badly within him swelled until it finally tore its way out through his throat in a long, raw, piercing cry, joining the anguished roaring and somber lowing of those at his sides. The surrounding ice shattered, crumbling from the walls and ceiling in tiny pieces that fell like frozen rain.

Moments passed, unmarked and uncounted. Solonn shook as he huddled against the grieving steelix, his eyes closed, ragged breaths hissing through his teeth. He was trying, however unsuccessfully, to comfort both his father and himself. He felt something slightly rough-textured alight upon his back and jolted slightly at the contact, but then realized it was only Oth’s hand. Opening his eyes, he turned and saw that they’d laid their other hand upon Grosh, embracing both him and Solonn insofar as they could.

<I should inspect the others who have fallen,> the claydol finally spoke up, their mindvoice subdued. <Some of them may require medical attention… if I can transport them, I will do so.>

Solonn only nodded in agreement, unable to reach words. As the rest of the temple slowly returned to his senses, he could hear the lamentations of other glalie, survivors facing loss or impending loss of their own. He hoped dearly that as few of them as possible would experience what he’d just gone through.

Oth parted from the group and started moving toward one of the other fallen glalie, but then stopped. <Someone is here…>

There was a very loud, resounding crack. Without even so much as a chance to wonder what could have possibly hit them, the claydol fell to the floor—and in the same instant, Grosh did likewise, his head dropping heavily to the ground and very nearly landing on his son.

Solonn cried out in shock and immediately looked to his father and his friend in turn, staring agape in disbelief at their sudden fall, fearing for their lives. Thankfully, Grosh was still alive; Solonn could see his breaths making glowing clouds of warmth in the surrounding cold. Meanwhile Oth wasn’t breathing… but then again, Solonn remembered, they never did. Their rather low but nonetheless present body heat confirmed that they’d survived. The nhaza that had struck them had been restrained, diluted into sheer cold attacks.

The moment he was sure they were both still alive, Solonn sought whomever had struck them down, suddenly awash in adrenaline and ready to fight back in case the attack on the temple had resumed. He swiftly found nine glalie at the entrance, newly arrived and trying but failing to conceal their horror at the scene before them.

“Please remain calm,” one of them addressed the survivors, trying to sound comforting and commanding despite the tremor she couldn’t quite keep out of her voice. “No further harm will come to you. You’ll all need to come with us before the Council of Authority for questioning and further aid and instructions.”

Any retaliation Solonn might have had in store for the new arrivals faltered when he realized what was going on: they were of the Security Guild, and they’d undoubtedly come to investigate the commotion here. With horror, he also realized why they’d knocked Grosh and Oth out, what they must have thought upon finding such strange creatures at a scene of carnage and destruction…

“No, you’ve got it all wrong!” he croaked out. “These two had nothing to do with this!”

The guild members regarded him with doubt, and then most of them looked to the one who’d spoken before. “Secure them and get ready to move them out,” their spokeswoman and apparent leader instructed her squad, nodding toward the six glalie gathered at her right. They nodded back in acknowledgment and moved in silent unison toward where Grosh and Oth lay.

“Leave them alone!” Solonn shouted, intercepting the approaching guild members. “What in the gods’ names is wrong with you? I told you, they didn’t do this!”

The approaching glalie didn’t respond, gliding around him and splitting into two groups to surround Grosh and Oth separately. Unable to watch idly as they set upon his father and friend, Solonn brought a piercing, white blaze to his eyes. Hissing furiously, he set off a nhaza in their midst, a warning shot.

No sooner had it gone off than another one just like it followed—but it wasn’t his doing. He shouted in surprise as it went off so close to him that he could feel the shockwave of its birth explode against his back. He turned in an instant to face its source and saw the guild leader there, holding a hard stare upon him.

“Sir, I’m going to ask you not to interfere, and I’m not going to ask you again,” she warned Solonn tensely, her tone telling that she wasn’t bluffing. “You’ll have a chance to speak with the council later, and they can determine the validity of your claims, but first we’re required to subdue all potential threats. If you wish to present yourself as a potential threat, then I’m afraid we will have to respond accordingly.”

Solonn only stared at her in silent, pained outrage for a moment, unable to believe his ears. Whatever was or wasn’t required of the guild personnel, he was sure they held a particular mistrust for unfamiliar species. That in turn surely made it all the easier and more convenient for them to believe that Grosh and Oth had been responsible for this tragedy.

With a tremendous effort, Solonn managed to suppress an urge to knock out the leader in one blast, just aware enough that the rest of her squad would just give him the same treatment if he tried. “Listen,” he pleaded with her. “There are people here who might need help, and you just attacked the only person who can give it to them. You’ve got to give them a chance!”

The guild leader held his gaze, her brow knitting, a frown he couldn’t quite interpret forming on her face. She remained silent for a moment’s deliberation. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, “but letting them awaken isn’t a risk we can take right now.”

“There’s no risk! They didn’t do this!” Solonn cast a hopeful, pleading glance around him at the survivors of the attack, who’d witnessed what had truly happened and could back up his claims… and the conflict on their faces couldn’t have been plainer. Come on, he urged them, tell them!

For a fleeting moment, a couple of them considered coming forward, their brows drawn together as they debated their next actions… but to Solonn’s dismay, none of them spoke up.

“Come on,” the guild leader said quietly. “The council needs to speak with you.”

The survivors slowly made for the exit, some moving more hesitantly than others and throwing glances back at people left lying behind, and then waited there to be led away. With bitter disappointment, feeling defeated for the time being and despising that notion very deeply, Solonn turned away from them to give the guild leader a smoldering, reproachful glare. His attention then shifted toward the rest of the squad as they proceeded to apprehend Grosh and Oth. He wanted to make damn sure they did no further harm to either of them.

They pushed Oth up onto the head of one of the guild members; she held the claydol there between her horns. Another of them lifted Oth’s detached hands up on a pillar of ice, then deposited them on top of his head; he’d correctly guessed that the hands could function while detached and incorrectly assumed that they could do so while Oth was unconscious.

The other four positioned themselves around Grosh, two to each side of his neck, behind his massive head. The six guild members then secured the prisoners (and detached parts thereof) to their bodies with ice, restored the shattered floor beneath them into a smooth surface, and began moving toward the exit. Solonn worked very mindfully to protect Oth and Grosh from the coldness of their captors’ bodies as the guild members carried them along.

“All right then,” their leader said, turning toward the survivors at the exit. “Everyone line up behind me and follow me out in an orderly fashion.”

The survivors did as they were told, and grudgingly, miserably, Solonn did likewise. As he followed them into the corridor beyond, he cast one last look back at the ruined temple, the place where Azvida, Jeneth, and gods only knew how many others had lost their lives. He stared off in that direction until the guild members carrying Grosh and Oth reached the exit, blocking his view behind and forcing him to move on. His heart ached at the thought that innocent people were being punished for those deaths—neither Jeneth nor Azvida would have wanted this, and he doubted the other victims would have wanted the blame to fall upon the wrong people, either.

The only hope left for things to be set right, or as right as they could be after something so terrible had happened, was if the council could be convinced that Grosh and Oth were innocent. Silently, Solonn prayed for the truth to prevail.

The council chamber was vast. The floor was raised slightly in a strip against the far wall, forming a platform just large enough to accommodate the members of the council. The council, however, was not there. The witnesses brought from the temple, a very small, shaken crowd of fearful, mournful faces, had been waiting for them for countless minutes. The only new arrivals since Solonn had entered the chamber were a couple of glalie who’d still been unconscious when the rest of the squad had left the temple, accompanied by the guild members who’d stayed behind with them.

Meanwhile some part of Solonn still hadn’t returned, lingering in that temple with the rising vapors and the ruined lives. With them. Another part was busy wondering where the guild had taken Grosh and Oth. He’d asked when the guild had split up, with the glalie carrying the prisoners continuing onward past the council chamber. All he’d gotten for an answer was “somewhere secure”, leaving him to fret helplessly for them and hope there was at least someone there guarding them and keeping them from freezing.

The rest of his thoughts and worries went toward his half-brother, still back at the snowgrounds and probably wondering when his parents would show up—not knowing that they never would. Oh gods… Solonn was sure that he’d be the one who’d have to tell Jen what had happened. He could already picture how the snorunt would react, and the image worsened the cold, sick feeling inside him.

So did the fact that the snowgrounds might have suffered an attack, as well—that he might not have to break the news to Jen after all, and for the most terrible reason.

He had to get out of there. He had to know how his loved ones were doing. He looked to the platform, wishing the council would show up and start this meeting so it could end.

Several more minutes passed before they finally made their appearance. The wall on the right side of the platform opened, and out came the Security Guild leader. She descended from the platform and took her position in front of it, off to the side, facing the small crowd.

“The honorable Council of Authority now arrives,” she announced. “Please bow as they make their entrance.” In less-than-perfect unison, the gathered witnesses lowered their faces. A moment later, “Now please give your attention to the lahain Hagen Ar-Vhannen,” she instructed them.

At the cue, Solonn lifted his gaze. The platform before him was now occupied by the most powerful figures in Virc society. The Council of Authority numbered five: two men and three women. Their pale eyes showed considerable age, as well as confusion, sorrow, unease, and fear. Whether or not the minds behind those eyes had been immovably convinced that Grosh and Oth were guilty remained unclear.

The council member in the middle of the row ascended and moved forward slightly before sitting down again. His eyes swept the crowd slowly, and he inhaled deeply before speaking.

“These are most regrettable circumstances that bring us together today,” the lahain began heavily. “This day has destroyed the sanctity of our holy temple and robbed good, honest Virc of their lives. The temple is forever desecrated by the atrocities committed there, and nothing can bring back those who were lost. All we can do is to ensure that those responsible are given their due punishment to protect our people from any such threat in the future.

“Our Security Guild has brought to us two… individuals… whom they found at the scene and whom they suspect to be responsible for the murders in the temple. However… they also tell us that one among you has proclaimed these two to be innocent.” Here Hagen allowed a pointed gaze to fall upon a face in the crowd that was considerably larger than those around it, and he held it there. “What can you offer us to support your claim?”

Solonn swallowed hard, sending out yet another quick, silent prayer for the council to see the truth in his words. Some tiny voice inside warned of the danger in what he was about to say, but he didn’t care. His loved ones were more than worth the risk.

“I know them, Lahain,” he said. His voice was hoarse and pained. “Neither of them would ever do such horrible things. And besides which, they weren’t even there when it all started. They were with me. We noticed the tremor and went to the temple right away… and when we entered, the fighting stopped.

“We were there to help,” he emphasized. “And their help may still be needed. Please, Lahain… you have to let them go. Some of the people back in the temple might be badly hurt; they’ll need to go somewhere far away for the help they need, and you’re imprisoning the only one who can get them there fast enough.”

Hagen sighed. “I’m afraid that all those left in the temple are beyond salvation,” he said quietly. “The Security Guild reported that all those whom they were unable to wake had perished.” At these words, the somber air that hung over the space grew even heavier, drawing mournful sounds from many of those gathered in the chamber. Sickened dismay dampened Solonn’s already dim eyelight further; had Oth been allowed to attend to those last victims, at least some of them might have had a chance.

“As for your claims regarding the two prisoners,” Hagen continued, “can anyone else here back up your testimony?” He lifted his gaze from Solonn and let it encompass the entire crowd. “Is there anyone else among you who claims those two did no harm to the temple and those therein?” he asked them.

There was a moment of silence that felt terribly long. Solonn expected a repeat of the situation in the temple, with no one would speaking up to support him.

But then, to his grateful surprise, “Yes, Lahain,” said one of the other witnesses. “He’s right. We’d already been fighting for a while before they came. They appeared in the temple—just appeared—and when the other side saw them, they bolted.”

“Other side…” Hagen mused aloud. He cast perplexed glances at the other council members, but they didn’t seem to know what to make of the matter, either. “Well then, if it wasn’t the two strange creatures who attacked the temple, then who was it?” he asked.

“As far as I could tell, it was just some other glalie,” Solonn answered.

The reaction to that statement wasn’t what Solonn had expected: a couple of the council members gave scandalized gasps, and the lahain himself looked greatly appalled.

“How could you even suggest such a thing?” Hagen hissed, the light in his eyes blazing. “Virc must not and do not take the lives of other Virc!”

“…It’s true,” another of the survivors dared to insist despite the vehemence of Hagen’s objection. “They just came in, and they hit us with no warning… just like that, everything went to hell.” He shook his head. “There were… no idea how many. Don’t know who they were, either. But they were definitely glalie.”

“Now do you see?” Solonn asked of the council; it came out sounding more like a challenge than he’d quite intended. “The ones you’ve imprisoned are not to blame. You’ve got to let them go!”

The lahain only glared at Solonn and the other witnesses. There was clearly something at work behind those ancient eyes, perhaps considering the witnesses’ claims or perhaps just seething in offense at the notion of Virc showing the same cruelty and disregard for life that members of any other society could. Solonn strongly suspected the latter.

Hagen drew a deep breath with a distinctly disapproving, hissing edge that he either failed or didn’t bother to suppress, and he began to speak. But before he could say more than a single syllable, the entrance to the council chamber opened, and an unfamiliar face peeked in tentatively, clearly aware that he was interrupting something but just as plainly urgent to do what he’d come to do.

“Ms. Skei-Vi!” he hissed, sounding very distressed. He made something of a beckoning motion, jerking his head toward the corridor outside.

The guild leader cast a questioning, troubled glance at the glalie at the entrance, then excused herself and went to join him. The portal sealed, and Solonn could hear them speaking for a short time before their voices drifted out of earshot. Everyone in the chamber wondered what in the world was going on, but before they had long to ponder it, the leader returned, alone. They noticed her grave expression at once, and the crowd watched her attentively as she returned to her place in front of the platform, wondering and fearing what she’d just been told.

“What is it?” Hagen asked her. He no longer sounded angry in the least; he only sounded concerned.

“I’m afraid I’ve just received terrible news,” the guild leader announced slowly, somberly. “A member of my guild has just come from the snowgrounds… all the children who were there have gone missing.”

Gasps and cries of shock and alarm filled the air, and Solonn’s heart froze. “Jen…” His voice cracked as his throat went dry. “Dear gods, my brother was in there!”

“And my children!” another voice in the crowd cried.

“Please, you’ve got to find them!” a third begged the guild leader.

“Members of my squad have already begun searching,” Ms. Skei-Vi tried to assure her, but the guild leader’s words failed to calm her or anyone else in the room.

“This day has grown darker still…” the lahain remarked quietly. “Ms. Skei-Vi, do you have any clue at all as to where these children might be or who might have taken them?” he asked.

“Presently, no,” the guild leader said regretfully. “They’ve vanished without a trace. There’s nothing left to even suggest what has become of them.”

“Hmm…” was the lahain’s sole response at first. He stared pensively at a spot on the floor for a moment. “I think I’ll hazard a guess as to who might be responsible,” he then said, at which every eye in the chamber met his gaze. “I believe this crime may well have been the work of the same ones responsible for the atrocities in the temple—the very ones being held in our cells at this very moment.”

Solonn had expected to hear something along those lines, but the fact that he’d seen it coming did nothing to dampen his reaction. “How can you make such a claim?” he demanded, his eyes burning bright once more. “And how could they have committed two crimes at the same time?” he added as the thought occurred to him.

“No one said those crimes were committed at the same time,” Hagen pointed out. “The children may well have been taken and left somewhere before the attack on the temple.”

“Maybe so,” Solonn responded, conceding the point no further than that. “But still, you can’t just accuse them without anything to base it on! There’s nothing to prove that they did this!”

“I see no proof that they didn’t do it,” Hagen countered.

“Oh, so I suppose the word of these witnesses means nothing to you, then?” Solonn said acidly.

“Lahain…” one of the other council members spoke up tentatively. It was the first time since the meeting had begun that any of them other than Hagen had spoken. “Surely the fact that so many of them report being attacked by other glalie has to count for something, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“If my suspicions are correct, then no, it very well may not,” Hagen said.

“And just what are those suspicions, exactly?” Solonn demanded.

“I believe that one of the prisoners, the many-eyed one, is a psychic,” was the lahain’s reply.

This brought a fresh surge of astonished responses from the crowd. “How do you know?” one among them asked. Solonn leveled a demanding gaze at Hagen with the same question and the worry that came along with it tightening his brow—how had the lahain correctly guessed that Oth was a psychic?

“Two among you have each offered a very significant detail where that’s concerned,” Hagen said. “The strange ones were described as simply ‘appearing’… and you,” he said, nodding toward Solonn, “claimed that one of them could quickly and easily transport people outside of our territory, did you not?”

Solonn could only stare wide-eyed at Hagen, horrorstruck by what he was hearing. It felt as though his blood had just frozen in his veins—he’d been so desperate to save his friend and his father, but now it seemed that he may have sealed their doom.

“The ability to disappear and reappear elsewhere belongs to the psychic element,” the lahain went on. “The use of that ability could explain how the children could have vanished so easily and completely. Furthermore… it bears mentioning that this wouldn’t be the first time someone among our people’s youth has experienced apparent abduction by a psychic-type… now would it, Mr. Zgil-Al?”

Solonn might have otherwise been surprised or startled to learn that Hagen knew his name, but all that truly got through to him was what Hagen was implying about Oth. “Don’t you even suggest that they had anything to do with that!” he hissed, thoroughly appalled.

“As I recall, no one ever determined who took you that day. I also recall that you told the Security Guild leader of that time that you had no memory of your abduction or anything that took place up to your return,” Hagen reminded him. “For all you know, that creature may very well have been your abductor.”

“‘Creature’…” Solonn spat distastefully, finding more to dislike in Hagen’s words with every moment. “That person is my friend, Lahain. They’re one of the kindest, most gentle-natured people anyone could ever hope to meet—they’d never do anything at all like what you’re accusing them of!”

The look Hagen gave him in response to that was sad—pitying, even. “Mr. Zgil-Al, I fear that you may be a victim of psychic deception. Just as the rest of you who’ve been brought here may have been tricked into believing you were under attack by glalie rather than by the strange ones, you may have been made to see the psychic in a much more flattering light.”

“No,” Solonn said firmly, now positively shaking with astonishment at what he was hearing. “You’re wrong, Lahain. And everyone here knows it. Tell him!” he shouted as he turned to face the crowd.

But to his dismay, the faces around him spoke of no desire to do any such thing. In fact, it looked like they might have been seriously considering Hagen’s words.

He turned back toward the council. “Well, what about the prisoners’ rights?” he said. “Aren’t you at least going to give them a chance to defend themselves before you just decide they’re guilty?”

“And just how do you suppose we go about that?” Hagen asked. “If they’re allowed to wake, what’s to stop the psychic from simply disappearing and bringing the steel creature along with them, freeing them to threaten us again in future? It’s a risk I cannot and will not accept.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Solonn growled. “They were there at the temple today out of concern and love, Lahain. They’re good, decent people, and yet here you are talking about them as if they’re just a couple of heartless monsters!”

“You can say whatever you want about them, but the nature of the day’s events seems all too clear now,” the lahain said resolutely. “It just makes far more sense that the terrible deeds done today could and would be done by such creatures rather than by Virc glalie. Why, anyway, would Virc ever kill their own kind?”

“Maybe they weren’t Virc,” suggested another of the council members, the very same one who’d spoken up before.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Zdir,” Hagen said. “You know just as well as I do that there are no other nations of our kind anywhere near here.”

“I was referring to exiles, Lahain,” Zdir elaborated. “Exiles who perhaps desired to get back at their fellow countrymen for their punishment.”

There was a strange sort of flickering in Hagen’s eyes as if Zdir had struck a particular chord with him. It was gone nearly as soon as it had come, however; his expression now solely and strongly suggested that she’d crossed some line. The faces of the other three council members underscored her apparent mistake further; they looked deeply worried for her.

“I think it’s time we brought this matter to a conclusion,” Hagen said coldly. “The council and I will go and discuss the day’s events and what we’ve learned regarding them among ourselves, and we will return with our final decision.”

There wasn’t a second’s delay between his words and the rest of the council’s response; the council member closest to the side exit opened it at once, and the five filed through it without another word. At the back of the line, Zdir stopped for the slightest moment, turning a supportive but not particularly optimistic gaze upon the crowd. Then she, too, was gone, and the portal sealed shut behind her.

Solonn’s eyes lingered upon the barrier. He could only imagine what sort of discussion was taking place wherever the council had gone, but he was certain that it was far from balanced. From what he’d seen, Hagen had virtually the entire council under his figurative thumb; most of them had come across as meek, obedient people who probably never spoke unless he specifically asked them to.

Zdir seemed to be an exception: someone clearly having a mind of her own, daring to voice her disagreement with the lahain. But she was only one questioning voice out of five. Chances were that wouldn’t be enough to sway or overpower Hagen, not if the rest of the council really did support their leader without question. She’d probably be made sorry in some way for her dissent, Solonn suspected darkly, and the rest of her peers would likely give her theories and opinions no further thought.

It was a bit longer than he’d quite expected before the council returned. Ms. Skei-Vi commanded the crowd to bow again as the council members took their places once more; Solonn refused, earning a disapproving frown from the guild leader.

Ignoring her, he looked toward Zdir, the only member of the council he still respected. Her face told all too plainly that she’d lost; she looked over the crowd with eyes filled with guilt and an unspoken apology.

“We of the council have arrived at our final judgment,” Hagen announced (a distinct bitterness flickered across Zdir’s face at the lahain’s use of the word “we”). “We’ve determined that our two prisoners, the steel creature and the psychic, were most certainly responsible for the destruction of our holy temple, the murders of eleven within it, and the abduction of an as yet unknown number of innocent children.”

It was exactly as Solonn had anticipated, no surprise whatsoever. Nonetheless, the judgment stabbed right into his heart, flooding him with outrage and despair. It was done. He’d failed to save them.

“The guilty parties will remain subdued in our custody until we’ve decided on a more permanent punishment,” Hagen went on. “The public will be informed of today’s tragedy but also assured that those responsible will pose no further threat. The Security Guild will do all in their power to find and bring back the children who’ve been taken from us… however, we must all prepare ourselves for whatever the gods may have chosen with regards to their fate,” he added in a somber tone.

“As for those of you who were caught in the center of all this wickedness… you have truly endured a uniquely tragic ordeal,” the lahain said to the crowd, and he sounded earnestly sympathetic. “It may take some time for you to fully realize and accept the truth about what you experienced at the temple and the ones responsible for it. What I now ask of you all is that until that time, you tell no one of the lies the wicked ones showed you.”

“You can’t possibly be serious!” Solonn responded at once, his eyes blazing. “This is absolutely unbelievable… First you convict innocent people based on nothing more than convenient coincidence and your own blatant bias, and now you honestly expect these people to not only deny what they know they saw but to lie about it from here on out?”

“What we tell you is no lie, Mr. Zgil-Al,” Hagen said firmly. “Your mind, as well as the minds of everyone present during the attack on the temple, has been wrapped up in the psychic’s trickery and abhorrent lies, and I’ll not have any of you spreading those horrid ideas among my people. Do you have any idea what such notions would do to them?” he hissed. “No Virc—or former Virc,” he added with a pointed glare toward Zdir, “has taken the life of their own kind for countless generations. The people couldn’t deal with such an unnatural notion!”

“Will they be able to deal with the real threat when it returns? Because it will; I guarantee it,” Solonn said. “You’ve laid this on the wrong people, Lahain, and more innocents will suffer because of it.”

“It’s a warning, Lahain,” Solonn said, unflinching. “And for our people’s sake, you’d best heed it. Reconsider your judgment. Let the prisoners go. And do not forbid us to tell the people the truth that could save their lives!”

The lahain inhaled deeply, letting it out on something between a hiss and a growl. He then rose from his seat and descended from the raised platform, gliding determinedly forward and coming to a stop right in front of Solonn in a clear move to show that he wasn’t swayed by his words or intimidated by his stature.

“You concern me, Mr. Zgil-Al,” he said, with a cold, hard stare up into the eyes of the larger man. “I fear that perhaps you can’t be trusted to listen to reason and maintain the peace. But I also pity you, and as such, I’m going to give you the chance to prove me wrong where that’s concerned. To err on the side of caution, however, you and the rest of those from the temple will be watched for a short while by a few of Ms. Skei-Vi’s people. If any of you cause any further disruption, they won’t hesitate to bring you down and put you in their cells,” he warned the crowd.

Hagen turned and resumed his place with the rest of the council. “Go,” he said to the crowd. “Remember your duties, all of you. Don’t pollute the public’s thoughts with the lies that have corrupted your perception. If I come to find out you’ve failed in this responsibility, you will join the prisoners in their fate.”

Solonn lingered at the scene, maintaining his burning, condemning gaze upon Hagen for as long as he could. “You’re making a dire mistake, Lahain,” he said reproachfully. “The real threat is still out there, and anything that happens to our people from this day forward is on your head.”

With an insistent push and a softly reiterated warning, the guild leader finally managed to get Solonn out of the chamber and lead him away, leaving the council with his final, ominous words.

* * *

“We gather here, in the sight of all gods, for the honor of those who have gone to join them on this day. Eleven souls, good Virc all, have been torn from our midst before their time in a most dreadful act of violence.”

The voice belonged to the leader of the Soul Guild, her words echoing throughout the surrounding space. Assembled there with her within an emormous, low-ceilinged cavern were dozens of glalie: survivors of the attack, friends and family of the victims, the other members of the Soul Guild, and several from the Security Guild.

They all formed a ring around a collection of eleven short ice spires that were arranged in a spiraling pattern in the center of the chamber. Within each of those spires, one of the people who had perished in the temple was encased.

“To those who lie before us: rest well. Though you have departed this life through fear and agony, you will now know only peace forevermore. Though you have fallen by the power of wickedness, take comfort in the knowledge that no wickedness can follow where you’ve gone.”

With a very heavy heart, Solonn gazed upon the spires. They were a nice, lovely tribute to the fallen, but soon he couldn’t bear to look at them any longer. He was overcome by thoughts of what they represented, as well as the full impact of the day’s events. Eleven lives, forever lost. Two innocent souls, unjustly paying for someone else’s crimes. Children, gods only knew how many, taken from their homes into unknown peril. Part of his family was now gone, while the rest of it, as well as all of Virc-Dho, now faced an uncertain future.

“We of the living world now relinquish custody of your spirits to your new keepers, but we will never let go of our memories of you. One day, we may meet again. Until then… farewell.”

With that, the Soul Guild leader began singing a wordless melody. The voices of her fellow Soul Guild members rose to join her. As the Soul Guild sang, the eleven spires began to sink slowly, descending on a circular platform into a very deep hole in the floor. Their peaks disappeared into it, and ice formed to cover the grave.

Neither Solonn nor anyone else gathered within that cavern could shed a single tear. But inside, they were all crying their hearts out, their grief manifesting here and there in frail sobs.

Their sorrow was earnest, but the fact remained that most of them didn’t know the truth about the tragedies they mourned. Most of them only knew what the authorities had told them, believing that the threat was out of the picture when, in reality, it wasn’t.

Solonn couldn’t vouch for anyone else among that crowd, but he knew one thing for certain: he couldn’t stand to remain silent. In that moment, he couldn’t care about the lahain’s threats and warnings, couldn’t care what speaking out might cost him. It was far more important that the people be armed with the truth. If they weren’t, chances were that these caverns would be hearing the Soul Guild’s song many times in the days to come.

“Just as they have moved on beyond our world, so must we move on within it. Now go, and may the gods give you strength.”

At the Soul Guild leader’s dismissal, the crowd gathered in the burial chamber stirred and began to disperse. Some of them were more reluctant than others to make that final parting from their loved ones.

Solonn was one of those who lingered, staying seated on the stone floor and holding the now featureless space in the center of the room in a sorrowful gaze. Mere minutes ago, they had been there, lifeless and encased in ice like all the others who’d died in the temple with them. Now that they were sealed away beneath the floor, their absence weighed on him more than ever. Once he left this chamber, he’d be leaving them behind for the rest of his life.

He wasn’t left alone much longer. A prod at his side interrupted his thoughts, and he rose and turned to see who was responsible. There, he found one of the Security Guild members. She was looking up at him with an unspoken question—no, a command—in her eyes.

“I’ve been sent by my guild to escort you,” she said, telling Solonn nothing he hadn’t already guessed. Hagen had told him he could expect such a thing. Still, Solonn frowned at her, wishing she weren’t there—and not only for his own sake. “You have better things to do right now,” he told her quietly, “and you know it.”

“I’m afraid that’s not for you to decide,” the guild member responded. She circled around and took up a position right behind him—or tried to. He turned to face her again the moment she got back there. “Get moving, please,” she said. “I don’t know where you live. You’ll have to lead.”

Solonn gave her an odd look. “Who said I was going home?”

“Well, it’s not as though you have anything else to do, now is it?”

He did, but he most certainly couldn’t tell her as much. Letting on that he still wanted to try and warn people of the threat they still faced would just get him knocked out and thrown in a cell. And no one would hear his warnings if he got himself shut away.

Meanwhile, Solonn didn’t particularly like the thought of leading someone who didn’t trust him (or at least answered to someone who didn’t) back home. Very briefly, he considered trying to pick Zilag out of the crowd and go with him instead. He hadn’t even been able to spot Zilag among the mourners, but Solonn was sure he was present. But associating himself with Zilag in front of the authorities quickly registered as a bad idea. He didn’t want Zilag and his family to get wrapped up in any trouble that the Security Guild might give him.

But even if he avoided Zilag, Zilag was unlikely to avoid him—sooner or later, especially in the wake of what had happened, he’d probably pay Solonn a visit. And either that guild member or another would probably still be hanging around.

Resigned to that notion, he sighed and nodded to the guild member, then turned his back on her and began drifting toward the exit. After a short distance, he looked back to see if she was actually following him—she was. She was probably going to tail him literally anywhere and everywhere he went. Solonn gave one last glance toward Azvida and Jeneth’s resting place, sending them a silent farewell and apology for having to leave so soon, then exited the chamber.

The presence behind him did nothing to put his mind at ease. She represented the mistrust of a leader who, as far as Solonn could tell, cared more about being right than about the welfare of his own people. She was also a constant reminder that the nation’s defenders were being wasted on keeping people quiet rather than keeping them safe.

Maybe she trusted him better than the lahain had, but Solonn couldn’t help but suspect otherwise. The lahain had said that he’d give Solonn and the other witnesses a chance to live free (or as free as one could be under constant watch) provided they could stay quiet. But Solonn couldn’t put it past him to decide—or, the chilling thought occurred to him, to have already decided—to forcibly silence the witnesses after all.

Would she do it? he wondered of his escort. He couldn’t be sure what she’d do once he was alone with her, though he felt fairly certain that she wouldn’t just knock him out and drag him to prison before then. Some of the people sharing the tunnel with them hadn’t been there at the temple or the council chamber; they might not understand why people who were supposed to protect them had suddenly turned on them. That in turn might force the guild members to take them out as well, in order to nip any loaded questions in the bud. Surely the guild would prefer to avoid that scenario.

At least, Solonn dearly hoped they would.

Before long, the tunnel branched off in multiple directions. The crowd began to split up down the separate paths, and Solonn’s sense of safety in numbers began to fade. Already, he’d seen a couple of pairs split off and disappear down their chosen tunnels—did those pairs contain guild members? Were those guild members going to strike their charges down as soon as they got someplace private enough, and was the same true of the one who followed him?

It seemed there was truly nothing to be done about it other than continue on his way; another gentle but insistent prod of his escort’s horn emphasized that point. Knowing no other way home from here, Solonn could only retrace his figurative steps and go back the way he’d come, choosing the path that led past the council chamber.

Very few others went that way along with him, and in the distance between the council chamber and what had once been the temple, the number of people taking his route quickly dwindled until there was only his escort. There were no potential witnesses now. No one to see, hear, or ask questions if the glalie behind him made a move.

And he wouldn’t know she had until it was much too late. That was the thing about the mother element’s highest power: it was summoned with a mere thought, and it struck in a near instant. It gave its victims virtually no warning…

…Virtually none.

There was a way to see it coming, Solonn remembered, astonished that he’d forgotten about that particular quirk of the technique. Then again, he hadn’t actually seen it since the last time Azvida had hunted alongside him, back before he’d worked up the nerve to hunt on his own. That had been years ago

Hoping his next actions wouldn’t trigger the exact thing he was trying to avoid, he stopped and turned to face his escort, earning an odd look from her.

“Sir, what do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“I’m just going home, just as you suggested,” Solonn said as evenly as he could, and with that he resumed his drift toward home, but in reverse.

The guild member maintained that baffled look upon him, but otherwise gave no objections and simply kept following him. Whether she knew why he was moving backward or had simply decided he was strange and she shouldn’t try too hard to make sense of him, Solonn couldn’t guess. But he wasn’t really concerned about what was going on behind her eyes at this point. It was what happened in them that mattered at the moment.

If she tried to fire off a nhaza, he’d see it coming. The telltale white flash in its user’s eyes just before its release would give it away. He kept a protect on standby, hoping dearly that he could call it up in time if she attempted anything against him.

Solonn had gone between his home and the temple so many times that he knew the way by heart; he was confident that he could navigate it backward. He knew the number and positions of all the offshoots of the main path, and he silently counted them as he passed them by—those landmarks would tell him when and which way to turn. All the while, he watched his escort’s eyes; thus far, their light remained still and blue.

Their owner kept obligingly quiet as she followed him—to a point. Eventually, “Are we almost there?” she asked.

Solonn winced slightly, trying not to lose the number in his head. “Yes,” he responded quickly, thankful that was the answer, “it’s just a li—”

His voice was abruptly cut silent, lost in a loud crack. Despite his efforts, he’d failed to see it coming. Its source emerged from an offshoot not far behind where Solonn now lay unconscious.

The newly arrived guild member rose a bit higher off the ground to see past Solonn. His partner returned his gaze with an approving nod, silently commending his work. He responded likewise, then sank back down to his normal hovering height and moved closer to their subdued target. The two officers secured the insensible glalie to themselves with ice, then lifted him with an effort and carried him away.

* * *

The next thing Solonn was aware of was pain: a somewhat dull throbbing sensation in the back of his head. Groaning, he stirred and lifted himself from the floor, slowly opening his eyes as he rose. What he saw left him all too certain about what had happened to him.

She’d got him. Somehow, in spite of his watchfulness, she’d managed to knock him out. Now he was imprisoned in one of their cells—and he wasn’t alone. There was Grosh, lying half-coiled at the opposite side of the room, still out cold. Solonn made to rush to his father’s side at once, but he was caught short by a familiar voice that spoke up in nearly the same instant.

“Good, you’re awake. You can help out with the psychic, then.”

Solonn turned toward its source. Seated nearby was none other than Zdir, the sole member of the council who’d seemed willing to hear the witnesses out, the only one who’d seemed willing to give Grosh and Oth a chance.

Solonn wondered what she was doing in their cell, though he certainly had his suspicions. But for now, he was much more concerned about Grosh and Oth—particularly the latter. He looked upon the claydol with concern tightening his brow; they were still utterly motionless, their hands still lying detached beside them, with nothing but the glow of their faint warmth to suggest that they were even alive.

That glow was notably dimmer than it should have been. The glalie who’d been guarding the cell had clearly done a sub-par job of keeping them warm—on purpose, Solonn suspected with disgust.

“Are they going to be all right?” he asked.

“Can’t say,” Zdir responded. “I don’t even know what this creature is, let alone how they work. But I suspect they’ll come to a lot faster if we can get them warmed up—and we need them to come to as soon as possible.” She dipped a horn toward the other side of the room, where another glalie lay in the corner opposite Grosh. “I doubt he’ll stay out much longer, and sooner or later his relief will show up.”

Zdir turned back to Oth, lowering her head slightly and staring intently at him. “Try to draw the cold from this creature as fast as you can, but don’t shut everything else out completely. We could have company at any moment now.”

That thought certainly wasn’t comforting. Nonetheless, Solonn tried to keep most of his mind on the task before him. It helped that it was his friend lying there in front of him. He most certainly didn’t want to let them down.

Simply protecting another creature from the cold was generally effortless for his kind, but what Oth needed at this point was to be rid of a chill that had already settled into them. Solonn thought back to times when he’d made ice melt or turn to vapor—opposite actions to freezing. That was the power he needed to use, or rather a much slower and gentler version thereof.

He went to work at once. At his side, Zdir was doing likewise, and as the two worked together, Oth’s temperature began to return to normal.

Moments passed, and Solonn began to wonder if maybe he and Zdir should stop—he didn’t want Oth to become overheated. Just as he was about to voice that concern, the claydol awoke, a few of their presently half-closed eyes simultaneously meeting the gaze of the two glalie at their side.

<What…> they began, their mindvoice and their true voice both sounding weak. <Solonn… what is happening?>

“We’ll have to explain later,” Zdir spoke up before Solonn could even begin to answer. “First, we need to get out of here, all of us. We need you to transport us.”

Oth wobbled in place for a moment, struggling to rise, their hands ascending to rejoin their body at different speeds. They tried again almost immediately and succeeded this time, but Solonn remained concerned for them. With a particular vulnerability to the ice element, recovering from an ice-type strike must surely be all the more difficult.

<Where?> Oth asked, still clearly fighting to keep their levitation stable even as they spoke.

“As far away from here as possible,” Zdir said.

Oth nodded slightly and began floating slowly and less than gracefully toward Grosh. Once the claydol was at his side, they proceeded to scan him, checking to make sure the steelix was in any fit state for teleportation.

“We need to go,” Zdir reminded them urgently.

Thankfully, Oth found out what they needed to know quickly. Satisfied that Grosh was more than well enough to survive the journey, <Come here,> they said to the two glalie, who went to join Oth and Grosh at once, Zdir lagging slightly behind.

“Oth… are you up to teleporting right now?” Solonn asked, worried not only for the claydol’s sake but their passengers’, as well. If Oth wasn’t quite strong enough to teleport them, and something went wrong… Solonn didn’t know what the results might be, but he strongly suspected they weren’t pretty.

<Yes,> Oth said. <Do not worry… What about him?> they then asked, gesturing toward the unconscious guard in the corner with one of their hands.

“Leave him. He’s not with us,” Zdir told them. “Now go!”

Without another moment’s delay, the claydol delivered the prisoners from their cell.

* * *

The golden glow faded out, and its passengers found themselves in a place that contrasted greatly with their previous surroundings. The sky, though overcast, was backlit by late afternoon sunlight, and nearly everything below it was blanketed in green. Steady white noise filled the air: the rushing of a waterfall that lay on the opposite side of a deep, wide chasm and poured endlessly into a river below.

Zdir eyed the water with uncertainty. “Where are we now?”

<Mordial,> Oth answered. <Do not worry—we are nowhere near your territory.> They turned to face the forest behind them, moving a very short distance into it. <There is an herb that grows here that will help Grosh greatly,> they said, gesturing toward the trees. <I will try to find some of it for him as quickly as possible.>

“It would probably be found faster if more than one of us searches for it,” Solonn said. “What does it look like?”

There was a brief delay in Oth’s response, and then an image appeared in the two glalie’s minds simultaneously. The herb in question was a bright yellow-green, with long leaves that curled slightly at their tips. It seemed vaguely familiar to Solonn, but he couldn’t really recall anything about it for certain.

“All right,” he said, moving to Oth’s side. He turned back to look at Grosh, who was still lying there helplessly. Though searching for this herb would benefit the steelix, Solonn found himself reluctant to leave him there in that condition.

“I’ll stay with him,” Zdir spoke up, having read Solonn’s hesitance correctly. “And don’t try too hard to rush back; this herb you speak of sounds like it might be something we’d do well to have readily available. Gathering more of it than he needs would be a good idea.”

“Agreed,” Solonn said. “And… thank you for agreeing to stay with him,” he added sincerely. The significance of her decision wasn’t lost on him—here was a Virc and a near-total stranger to boot, willing to be left alone with a creature whom so many of her people had feared. “It’s good to see someone else who doesn’t fear him.”

“If what you claimed he was doing in the temple is true, then I have nothing at all to fear from him,” Zdir said. “And I’m inclined to believe that it is.”

The light in Solonn’s eyes brightened and trembled. He thought to say something in response, but he was moved beyond words. The way Zdir was treating his father and his friend contrasted so greatly with the way the lahain had that for a moment, it all but overwhelmed him.

“…Thank you,” he finally managed, very quietly. Then he turned and allowed Oth to lead him deeper into the forest.

Making his way among that many trees was no easier for Solonn than it had ever been, but the relatively slow pace at which the two moved helped him avoid losing track of Oth. They didn’t rush, scanning the ground carefully for the plant they sought, but Solonn couldn’t help but suspect that Oth couldn’t speed up even if they wanted to. Their levitation was still a little unsteady; it was clear they still had some recovering to do. Their condition had actually factored into his decision to join them in their search for the herb; he was even less comfortable with the notion of leaving Oth all alone.

“How common is it?” he asked. “How long do you think we’ll need to look?”

<Not terribly common,> Oth answered, <but fortunately not terribly rare in this area, either. I think we will be able to gather a sufficient amount within a reasonable frame of time.>

Solonn nodded slightly, but he couldn’t help making a faint, disappointed noise. Whatever Oth considered a “reasonable frame of time” probably wasn’t as short as he hoped. Aid for his father just couldn’t come soon enough as far as he was concerned.

At least something will be done for him, he told himself silently. That was more than could be said for most of the people who were affected by the recent tragedies…

“Oth,” he spoke up; he saw the claydol pause and turn to face him from a couple of yards away. “Thank you for doing this, for bringing us here,” he told them. “I’m glad you’re willing and able to help him.”

Oth lowered their head in acknowledgment of Solonn’s gratitude. <You are welcome,> they said softly.

Relative silence fell over Solonn and Oth as the search wore on, neither of them saying anything. The very faint skittering and buzzing of insects and the calls of birds in the background were the only sounds either of them could hear. Then, finally, <There! I have found some!> Oth said, beckoning with one of their hands, then sped up slightly as they made their way forward and to the left. Solonn followed, and soon the two reached a small cluster of plants that matched the picture Oth had provided. Oth telekinetically harvested the leaves, lifting them into the air, then gathered the leaves up against their chest with their hands and held them there.

<This will serve Grosh with plenty to spare,> Oth said. <We should be able to return now.>

Solonn eyed the gathered herb samples; there looked to be about half a dozen of them. He hoped Oth was right about there being enough, all the while trying, with no real success, not to think about why keeping the medicine in stock had become prudent.

Well… if it’s not enough, we could always come back for more later, he figured, and he couldn’t help but suspect darkly that they’d end up having to do so sooner rather than later. “All right, let’s go,” he said, and the two of them began making their way back through the forest.

Upon returning to Grosh and Zdir, they found the steelix still unconscious. Zdir was waiting next to Grosh’s head. She looked up from where she sat to acknowledge Solonn and Oth as they took their places at her sides.

Oth let go of the leaves and brought them together in a tight bundle in midair, right in front of Grosh’s face. The claydol kept them hovering there for a few moments, letting Grosh breathe in the scent of the leaves for a while. Eventually, the steelix stirred, albeit not much; his head rose a couple of inches off of the ground, and he groaned very faintly, but his eyes remained closed.

<Open your mouth,> Oth instructed him gently.

There was a slight delay, but then Grosh’s mouth fell open, the jaws slackened. Oth let one of the leaves drift free from the bundle as they brought the rest back up against their chest, directing it onto the steelix’s tongue. The flavor awakened Grosh further; his eyes opened partway, unfocused for the moment, and he grimaced, his mouth working as though he were trying to get the offending herb out.

<No, Grosh. You need to consume it.>

That earned another faint groan from the steelix, but Grosh complied nonetheless, closing his jaws and forcing the herb down. He shuddered and stretched, flexing and twisting his segments, then slowly lifted his head further and shook it a bit as if trying to clear something out of it.

Blinking a few times in succession, he stared out at the unfamiliar scene before him for a moment, finally coming back to his senses in earnest, then turned his gaze upon his son.

“Where…?” he asked hoarsely, unable to finish the question.

Where is she? Solonn couldn’t help but suspect that meant, judging by the anguished look on the steelix’s face. But he couldn’t quite find the strength to speak of Azvida, especially not with his father’s grief staring him in the face and stoking his own all the higher.

Sinking wearily to the ground, “We’re in Mordial,” Solonn finally responded, answering a different but likely present question. “We had to flee Virc-Dho… we were being imprisoned there.”

Grosh’s reaction was delayed, but when it came through, there was something dark in his expression, something that spoke of burgeoning, sickened outrage. “No…”

“I’m afraid so,” Zdir said. “You and… Oth, was it?” She looked to the claydol, who nodded. “You were deemed responsible for the murders in the temple and the kidnapping of the children who were at the snowgrounds at the time.”

Oth’s reaction was left untranslated, but the gist of it was clear enough: they sounded distinctly astonished, even hurt. Unconsciously, they reeled back a bit from the others, then lowered their head and closed all of their eyes. Grosh, meanwhile, reared back as if something had lashed out at him, the motion surprisingly forceful for someone who’d just regained consciousness, and his expression was both the most furious and the most pained that Solonn had ever seen.

“How dare they…” the steelix said in a near-bottomless tone, one that somehow sounded just as vulnerable as it did threatening. Fresh streams of tears welled up and poured from his eyes. “How dare anyone even suggest that I’d—” He winced at the thought, shaking with fury. “—that I’d do anything to hurt her!”

“They also accused you of stealing her son,” Solonn said quietly past a lump in his throat. “Jen… he was in the snowgrounds. He was taken.”

Grosh just stared at him for a moment, still shaking, his jaws parting silently and his eyes widening further in the wake of that news. Then his head sank, his gaze dropping to the ground, tears still falling. “Dear God…” he all but whispered, the words cracking. “And… God, I would never…” he managed before his ability to speak failed him altogether.

“I tried to tell them that,” Solonn said miserably. Hearing the hurt in his father’s voice worsened his guilt and shame over failing to get through to the lahain all the more. “I tried to tell them you wouldn’t hurt anyone, either of you…”

“We both did,” Zdir added. “I refused to take ‘it’s not possible’ as an answer from the rest of the council, even knowing what it would cost me.”

What she seemed to be suggesting came as no real surprise to Solonn. “He dismissed you from the council, didn’t he?”

Zdir nodded. “Tried to take me out and throw me in the cell right alongside you three, furthermore, but I saw that coming and headed it off. The lahain—our leader,” she added for the benefit of Grosh and Oth, “just couldn’t stand to take any chances with those of us who weren’t so willing to let people believe his conclusions.”

<Those who were at the temple when we arrived there… the survivors… they saw that we were not the ones responsible, did they not? What about them?> Oth asked.

“Oh, I don’t think the lahain is concerned about what they saw anymore,” Solonn said bitterly. “He seems to have them all convinced that they were only being tricked into seeing glalie attacking them…” He was almost too ashamed to elaborate any further, to tell Oth how his fellow countryman had portrayed them, but finally managed to do so. “He said that you’d deceived them psychically.”

There was a very small delay in the claydol’s reaction. Then their eyes all widened dramatically, and a noise escaped them that suggested they were even struggling to speak in their true voice, let alone their mindvoice.

“I don’t think I can apologize enough for how you’ve been wronged, all of you,” Zdir said sincerely. “Just… just know that not everyone believes these horrible things about you two,” she said with a glance toward Grosh and Oth, “and that you,” she said to Solonn as she turned to face him, “weren’t wrong to stand up for them.”

Grosh’s only response was something between a growl and a sigh, the look on his face telling that he was far from consoled. Solonn looked at him regretfully, knowing that even just one person believing that Grosh could have done something so horrible to someone he loved so much was one too many for the steelix to bear. He wished dearly that he could have done more to prevent his father from having been accused of such things.

Oth lowered their head slightly, some of their eyes shutting halfway and the rest closing completely. They tried and failed to speak again, but finally managed it on the third attempt. <…I appreciate your trust,> they said, both of their voices subdued, <and I thank you for it. I just wish there were something more that I could do for you and for your people. You are still in danger since whoever was actually responsible has not been identified, let alone apprehended… and in return for rescuing us, you deserve anything I could give.>

“Well… perhaps it’s a good thing you feel that way,” Zdir said. “Perhaps it’s a very good thing…” She rose, moving back a bit so she could hold eye contact with all three of the others more easily. “Against our enemies, there’s little we can do. We don’t know exactly how many there are—though if they’re who I think they are, they number in the dozens. At least.”

“Oh gods…” Solonn hadn’t imagined they were quite that numerous—the thought of how high the death toll might be if the enemy were to attack in full force made him feel like his blood had frozen in his veins. “This is exactly why the people back home need to be made aware that the real threat’s still out there. None of them have any idea just how much danger they’re in!”

“Actually, I suspect they’re about to find out it’s not over yet,” Zdir told him. “By now, the Security Guild has probably discovered the empty cell we left behind. I imagine the people will be told about the escape and warned of the possibility of future attacks by more of those ‘illusory’ glalie.”

Solonn looked at her in silence, conflicted about what she’d just told him. Though the Virc still wouldn’t know the whole truth, they’d at least know to look out for trouble from other glalie now. It was a step in the right direction… but still, the Virc would likely continue to believe that two people who meant very much to him were there behind those glalie…

“Anyway,” Zdir went on, “the exiles are clearly well-trained to have been able to take as many lives as they did. My point is, if any of you are thinking of vengeance, I’m afraid you’ll need to think otherwise.”

The noise Grosh made at that and the way he shifted uneasily suggested that he was indeed harboring such thoughts, at least to some degree. An image of what the steelix would likely do to Azvida’s killers appeared in Solonn’s mind, an image of powerful steel coils crushing bodies, a massive tail falling like a hammer and splitting them wide open… Solonn shuddered hard, grimacing, fighting at once to get the gruesome thoughts off his mind.

“There is, however, one thing we may be able to do,” Zdir said. “I believe we might very well have a good chance of being able to rescue the children—a better chance than the Security Guild might have, anyway.”

Four of the eyes upon her widened instantly, and all of Oth’s blinked in surprise. <You truly believe we are capable of such a thing, given the advantages you believe these exiles to have?> they said.

“We have advantages of our own—you especially,” Zdir responded. “Your ability to teleport people could prove invaluable in getting us out of a dangerous situation, getting the children away from their captors, getting anyone who’s suffered any harm the help they’d need…”

She turned a meaningful gaze on Solonn while speaking those last several words, and he recognized just what she was referring to. He’d mentioned the Haven back in the council chamber, albeit not by name. It was a resource that, as far as he could figure, the Security Guild couldn’t provide for the kidnapped children, or for any of their would-be rescuers if it came to that.

<I… must confess that I have a particular concern about this,> Oth said. <While it is true that I can do as you say, the nature of our enemies presents a problem that could undermine my ability to help in that capacity: conceivably, any one of them could subdue me—and for that matter, any of us—in an instant, without warning.>

“Oh, there’s a warning that comes with it, if you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about,” Zdir said as she turned to face the claydol. “If it’s sheer cold or its mother technique, there’s an elemental telltale preceding them that you can feel and react to if you know how. How else do you suppose I avoided being knocked out and shut away with the rest of you? Get away with living for as long as I have and do the kind of work that I’ve done and you learn a few things.”

Solonn stared at her, not sure what to think of her claim. Yes, those techniques came with a perceptible elemental surge. But in his experience, the part of it that came before the execution of those techniques could only be felt by their user. Any observers would only be able to feel the part that accompanied the execution at the most, with no time to react to it.

But then again, that was only what he knew from his experience. Zdir’s extended back decades before his—quite conceivably time enough, he supposed, to have trained herself to catch that telltale in time to thwart such an attack.

<Well,> Oth said, sounding slightly relieved, <if you can indeed perceive these attacks before they connect, I could share in your perception and thereby teleport us away in response… if you will consent to the mental link, of course.>

“Of course,” Zdir said. “So I take it that means you’re willing to take this on?”

<I will,> Oth confirmed.

Zdir gave a faint smile of gratitude. “Thank you,” she said earnestly. “Your decision could save lives.”

She turned to Solonn again, and the question in that look was as obvious as if it had been spoken aloud. He hesitated to answer at first, still uncertain about their chances and all too aware of what could befall them if they failed, and he couldn’t keep the fear out of his eyes.

But ultimately, he couldn’t deny that he felt even worse about how someone especially vulnerable to ice and someone Zdir’s age would fare on their own. They and the children who might very well depend on them needed all the help they could get. Solonn didn’t know what the exiles had in store for the snorunt they’d taken, but every possibility that came to his mind was unacceptable—especially where a member of his own family was concerned.

“Yes,” he told her quietly. “My brother’s out there—if there’s anything I can do to help bring him back, I will.”

“Well then,” Grosh spoke up, lifting his upper body from the ground once more. “You could’ve counted me in from the start, but now it’s even less of a question—I have to go with you.”

Zdir held his gaze for a moment, then turned away with a faint, concerned sound. “Grosh…” she began uneasily, “as much as I’d appreciate your help, I’m… well…”

“You’re what?” Grosh urged her to finish as gently and calmly as he could manage, which wasn’t much of either under the circumstances.

“I’m concerned that your accompanying us would be at the expense of something we need to have on our side—specifically the need to keep our enemies from becoming aware of our presence well before we’re aware of theirs. Grosh… was it you who came to Virc-Dho all those years ago? Were you the silver creature whom people described as… well, as making a lot of noise whenever he moved?”

The steelix blinked, then groaned, recognizing what Zdir was getting at there. “Yes… yes, that was me,” he said, wilting with a sigh. “You’re right… there’s no way they wouldn’t hear us coming if I went with you.”

<Perhaps… that is not necessarily true,> Oth said a bit hesitantly. All eyes turned toward them. <I think I might be able to keep him off the ground. That should eliminate the sound of his slithering.>

Solonn frowned at Oth. It wasn’t that he didn’t want them to try what they were suggesting—he knew how much his father wanted to pitch in on this mission, knew what it meant to him. He was just concerned about them exerting themself in such a way. Even though they’d been specifically trained for shows of strength, it would be no easy feat even to lift, let alone carry, something as heavy as Grosh had to be. Not to mention the fact that given their recent ordeal, Oth surely wasn’t in peak condition…

Holding his tongue, not wanting to undermine Oth’s confidence and make them choke, Solonn watched as bright, fuchsia light filled the claydol’s eyes. Slowly, Grosh rose up from the grass, coming to a stop just a few inches off the ground. Oth held him there for a few seconds… but then the light in their eyes began to falter. The claydol shook slightly as they struggled to maintain their telekinetic hold on him, but not for long—they abruptly lost their grip, and Grosh fell back down with a loud thunk that sent birds from the forest behind them scattering into the air.

Oth hovered unsteadily for a moment, their hands hanging lower than usual as they worked to regather their telekinetic strength. <I am fine…> they told the others, noticing their worried expressions, <and I am sorry,> they said to Grosh.

“That’s all right,” Grosh told them, his voice a low, resigned rumble. “You don’t need to be busting your brain carrying me around, and I don’t need to be slowing you all down by making you have to stop every few seconds to give Oth a break. I can stay here,” he said, though the words were followed by a sigh that told that he still dearly wished he didn’t have to.

Zdir nodded at him, though she looked earnestly sympathetic. “I’m sorry you can’t join us,” she told him. “Don’t worry—we’ll do our best to return safely.” She turned to Oth. “Before we begin our search, I have a few relatives whom I think we should inform about the situation—at the very least, I think they deserve to know what I intend to get myself into. Is there anyone you feel you need to pay a brief visit to before we head out?” she asked of the claydol.

<No,> Oth said. They gathered the unused herb samples back up as they spoke; the leaves had fallen during the claydol’s attempt to hold Grosh aloft. <I am ready whenever the rest of you are.>

“And you?” Zdir asked Solonn.

Solonn nodded. “Just one stop,” he said. Part of him wouldn’t have minded getting a chance to touch base with his old friends from Lilycove again, now that Oth’s presence made such possible. Especially since he couldn’t help but think that the extra stops Zdir proposed were partly intended as a chance to say goodbye… just in case. But he was concerned about taking too much of the time that could be spent searching for the snorunt; he didn’t know how much they had to spare.

He’d have answered Zdir’s question just as Oth had if it weren’t for the fact that Zilag and his family were back there in Virc-Dho—and therefore potentially in harm’s way. He wanted to make absolutely certain that they knew the threat hadn’t passed.

Solonn, Zdir, and Oth appeared in a chamber a short distance from the Zir-Arda residence. It was as close as Oth could get them, now that there were a few others in tow. The only other option was to make more than one trip, and Oth had been advised against teleporting too much for fear that they’d tire out.

The additions to the search party were Ronal, Zereth, and Narzen, though Solonn had too much on his mind to recall their names very easily. He also couldn’t remember exactly how they were related to Zdir; one of them had called her an aunt, but he’d already forgotten which.

Solonn broke away from the small crowd, and the others began following him toward his destination. Once he spotted the familiar ice wall that blocked off his friend’s home, he paused, signaling that the others were close enough. He’d be going in alone, just as Zdir had done on their previous stops; she’d reckoned it would be easier and less startling to break the news to each of them without strangers watching, and he’d agreed.

He moved over to the barrier, glancing back at the others waiting just out of sight from the threshold… out in the open, in conspicuous numbers, with an alien creature hovering among them. Zdir had assured him that the psychic link she now shared with Oth would keep them out of trouble if someone spotted them. In that event, Oth would collect the party with a couple of teleports in quick succession, and they’d all be elsewhere before their discoverers could react.

Hopefully Zdir was right. Hopefully things would go smoothly if it came to that.

Somewhat cautiously, wanting to make as little noise as he could, Solonn tapped on the ice wall a few times with his horn. He heard hushed voices from the other side—glalie voices, thankfully. He hadn’t wanted to wake Kavir and Ryneika, Zilag and Hledas’s children. A blurred pair of blue lights drifted into view, approaching the wall, and then the clouded ice before them vanished.

“Oh hey.” Zilag’s tone fell notably short of its usual energy. “Come on in…” He turned and moved back into the main chamber, and Solonn followed. Solonn saw Hledas Zir-Arda lingering over by the entrance to the couple’s bedroom, watching him enter.

“What’s going on?” she asked, keeping her voice low, though her tone suggested that she already knew the answer.

“I think it’s fairly obvious,” Zilag said quietly as he resealed the chamber, then turned a somber gaze on Solonn. “Go ahead and have a seat,” he said, then generated some ice for Solonn. Solonn muttered a wordless thanks as he sat down, then took a couple of small bites. He didn’t want to snub the hospitality, and he figured he’d do well to have a little more on his stomach.

Zilag settled down himself, facing Solonn from a few feet away, and Hledas sat next to her mate. “I tried to get a hold of you after the service,” he said, “but the crowd was…” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t get to you. And when I went to your place, no one was there.”

Zilag sighed again, and for a moment he looked like he was struggling to speak. Finally, in a rather brittle voice, “There was no one at… at Azvida and Jeneth’s home, either. Jen… he was one of the ones who was taken, wasn’t he?” he asked. Solonn nodded regretfully in response. Zilag swore under his breath. “Gods… they’d better find him,” he said.

“I… don’t have much faith in them.” The admission had just slipped out. Solonn had intended to warn Zilag and Hledas about the lingering threat to the warren prior to letting them know what he was about to try and do, but the way their faces saddened further at his words compelled him to go ahead and let them know something else was being done about the situation. “So a few others and I are going to go search for the children, as well.”

Zilag’s brows drew together in distinct worry, while Hledas’s rose in what looked like disbelief. “Solonn…” Zilag said tentatively, “that’s certainly brave of you, but… I don’t know. I’m not sure this is something you ought to be doing—I mean, you know what the ones responsible for this are capable of. I can’t say I like the sound of you going right into their lair like that.”

“Oth is with us,” Solonn told him, “as are a few other glalie. Oth can teleport; they can get us out of trouble very fast if need be. And if any of us—or, gods forbid, any of the children—are hurt, they can take us to a place where we can get help—really good help.”

Hledas cast a meaningful, rather troubled glance at Zilag, who mirrored it somewhat. She looked toward Solonn. “I’ve heard of this… ‘teleporting’,” she began slowly. “And I’ve also heard that it’s a psychic ability…”

Solonn’s expression hardened, his eyes narrowing; he didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. “That’s irrelevant,” he said sternly. “That ability could be the very thing that saves those children. And I’ll have you know Oth is one of the last people you should be mistrusting right now.” He turned to face Zilag. “You should understand, at least. You remember what I’ve told you about them, don’t you?”

“I do…” Zilag said, but with a hesitance that suggested something left unsaid.

“But what?” Solonn pressed, filling in the blank, sounding more than a little hurt. There he was, having to convince Zilag that Oth and Grosh were innocent when he’d been sure his best friend would just take his word for it. “Please… don’t tell me you think I only trust them because they’re making me trust them.”

“Maybe you should at least consider that possibility,” Hledas suggested. Solonn glared at her in response.

“Look…” Zilag said carefully, “I want to believe this Oth person’s all right. I really do. But the same time… there are some very, very strange things going on around here lately—very strange and very dangerous. And it’s not the first time something strange has happened to one of us—I’m not assuming Oth had anything to do with your abduction,” he added hurriedly when he saw the pained frustration on Solonn’s face. “I’m trying not to assume much of anything at this point.” He drew a deep breath as if bracing himself for something. “And that’s why I’m going with you.”

Hledas shot Zilag a rather distressed look, while Solonn could only stare blankly at him, at a loss for how to feel about his friend’s choice—especially given the reasons behind it.

“Are you insane?” Hledas hissed at Zilag. “You can’t go out there facing gods only know what with people we don’t even know if we can trust!”

“If we can trust them, if they really are the best chance those kids have at being rescued, then they should get all the help they can. I don’t want to have to wonder someday if things could have gone better if I’d helped out. Hledas… that could have been Kavir out there.”

Much of the severity left Hledas’s features, her mouth falling partway open. “…I still don’t like this,” she said quietly, lowering her gaze.

“I know,” Zilag said. “But I have to do this. I have to do my part, and I have to look out for my friend.”

“I don’t need you to protect me from Oth,” Solonn insisted, but his tone told that his anger was beginning to dissolve. Even if Zilag still fell short of understanding the situation, his earnest desire to help make things right made up for it somewhat.

Solonn held his gaze in silence for another moment, then sighed and nodded in acceptance.

“Fine,” Hledas conceded as well, but she still sounded none too happy about Zilag’s decision. “I’ll stay with the kids—you’d better come home,” she told Zilag, but there was earnest concern there alongside the warning. “Don’t you dare make me have to explain to our daughters that they’ll never see their father again.”

“I’ll try,” he told her, though he sounded a little less than confident. “I’ll try as hard as I possibly can. Just… well, just in case… tell them I love them, okay?”

Hledas’s frown deepened, the light in her eyes wavering. She nodded, apparently unable to find her voice in the moment.

Zilag moved closer to Hledas, closing his eyes and lowering his head, allowing his forehead to touch hers. “Goodbye,” he said, adding, “for now.” He lifted his gaze once more and looked toward Solonn. “Guess we’d better head out, then,” he said, moving toward the exit.

“Wait,” Solonn said, halting him. He turned to face both Zilag and Hledas once more. “There’s something you both need to know—that’s the main reason I came here in the first place.” Zilag and Hledas both looked at him attentively. He opened his mouth to speak… but then paused. Telling them to spread the word about the mistaken leadership and lingering threat could get them knocked out and thrown into prison chambers. Their children might never see them again.

He inhaled and tried another approach. “Just… look after yourselves, all right?” he said finally, opting for a more general warning. “Look after yourselves and everyone you know. Zilag has a point about keeping an open mind,” he acknowledged aloud, though he aimed the notion in a different direction. “Don’t assume you’re safe just because the authorities say you are, and tell everyone you can to stay vigilant, too,” he advised.

Zilag nodded at this, as did Hledas, though the light in the latter’s eyes still fluttered with uncertainty. Hoping that they’d heed his warning, “Goodbye,” Solonn said to Hledas. “You and your daughters stay safe. Please.” Then he turned back toward the exit. Zilag removed the ice barrier, replacing it once he and Solonn were in the corridor outside, and the two went down the hall to join the rest of the party.

* * *

The search began in the border-cavern. Through Oth, Zdir explained that the Security Guild most likely had the warren covered, and that the children were likely being held by exiles somewhere outside of Virc territory anyhow.

She instructed the others to exercise caution around any glalie they encountered and to avoid conflict—with the exiles, with guild members on a search of their own, or with anyone else—unless it was absolutely necessary to engage them. Meanwhile, wherever circumstances allowed it, they’d seek information from members of other species. Perhaps they’d noticed something that could point the way to the missing snorunt.

There were nods of acceptance from the others, but there was poorly concealed uncertainty on some of their faces, including Solonn’s. He had a hard time imagining any of Shoal Cave’s inhabitants wanting to cooperate with a bunch of predators, to say nothing of how they might react to Oth. But the alternative was a virtually blind search through caverns that extended gods knew how far and in gods knew how many directions. If they wasted too much time…

He caught Zilag’s eye. His friend returned the most reassuring look he could manage. Solonn suspected the sentiment was directed inward as much as outward.

The seven moved through the border cavern in a tight cluster with Oth at the center, staying close together to ensure that no one was left behind if they had to make a sudden escape. But when they reached the narrow passageway leading out into Shoal Cave proper, they were forced into single file.

Oth was fourth in line, hovering high enough to let them see over the heads of the glalie. Worry gnawed at Solonn as he followed at the very back, hoping that he and everyone else at the ends of the line were close enough for Oth to spirit away.

No danger had showed itself thus far. The border-cavern had been devoid of life, and the tunnel that led out of it was proving likewise. As the seven emerged into an open space once more and proceeded to explore it, that trend continued. Minute after minute passed, and one stone chamber after another turned up empty.

This did nothing to ease the tension that hung over the air. Sooner or later, the party knew, they’d run into someone. They could only hope it wasn’t the wrong someone.

Sure enough, the glalie in the party soon detected someone warm-bodied, and everyone heard the sound of flapping wings. The party halted, and several pairs of blue eyes turned toward a tunnel that curved rather sharply out of sight. The creature was just around the bend.

They lay in wait for a short time to see if there was anyone else down that passageway—more specifically, anyone who wasn’t warm-bodied. Apparently there wasn’t; no crack sounded to indicate a hunter picking the unseen creature off. The heat signature remained steady rather than suddenly vanishing, and its source was staying put rather than fleeing.

Zdir turned to face the others and nodded. The party entered the narrow passageway in the same formation as they’d entered all the rest: three glalie ahead of Oth, three behind, and Zdir in the lead. Just as she was about to disappear around the bend, a shrill chittering arose.

In almost the same instant, a thick ice barrier formed behind the party, sealing off that end of the tunnel. Solonn could hear another one solidifying up ahead—the flying creature could no longer escape.

<It is only a lone male zubat,> Oth informed the others. To the zubat, <Do not be afraid. We mean you no harm,> they said, using the most calm and soothing mindvoice they could manage. The zubat had stopped chittering but could still be heard fluttering about out of sight. <We are merely seeking information. Please try to respond as quietly as possible. We need to know if you have smelled or heard anything out of the ordinary recently, and if so, where.>

“Other than you just now, no!” the zubat said. To his credit, he managed to keep his voice down to a hiss. “Now please, go away! Leave me alone!”

<Very well. Thank you for your time.> The ice barriers vanished, and the wingbeats dwindled away as their maker finally fled. <We shall proceed, then,> the claydol said to the rest of the group, and the line began moving once more.

The search wore on. A detached sense of fatigue and hunger was starting to set in, but there was far too much on Solonn’s mind for him to care—a mind that was beginning to play tricks on him. Anything even remotely shaped like a snorunt warranted extra glances back to confirm that it wasn’t one. Phantom movements in the corner of his eye kept seizing his attention only to have nothing to show, with no indication that any of the others had seen anything, either.

The seven encountered and questioned more zubat along the way. Just like the first, the second knew nothing of any value to the party, and the same was true of the third. The fourth’s initial response was to fire a confuse ray at the party; the attack was foiled by Ronal’s protect aura, and an ice beam fired as a warning shot by Zdir dissuaded the zubat from attacking again. But even once he agreed to cooperate, he had nothing useful to say.

At length, the seven found themselves in walrein territory… or what should have been walrein territory. They’d been prepared for trouble from the natives, but the natives were nowhere to be found, alive or otherwise.

Their total absence troubled Solonn further, especially since were no signs of any struggle here. Maybe they’d simply relocated, but the lack of evidence as to why they weren’t around reminded him uncomfortably of what had happened to the missing snorunt—they’d also been described as simply gone. If the same thing was behind the abduction of those snorunt and the emptiness of this place…

He didn’t want to believe it. The possibility reminded him too much of Hagen’s theories. But it was getting harder and harder to imagine that exiled glalie in any numbers could make people vanish so thoroughly. Believing that the enemies might have a teleporter in their midst after all, meanwhile…

Solonn shuddered hard and tried to chase those notions away, tried to remind himself that the walrein and their charges still could have left of their own accord. But the other possibilities just wouldn’t leave him be. He could no longer be certain of what he was facing, leaving him all the more worried for the snorunt, for the party seeking them, and for the Virc.

The caverns beyond the deserted territory mirrored those just beyond the border-cavern; there was no one about, not even any zubat. The imagined presences and movements kept popping up, however, and now that Solonn was helplessly entertaining the notion of enemies who could teleport, his mind’s tricks had him more on edge than ever.

Then a faint blue light appeared in the chamber they’d just entered, followed by a glalie who was carrying a pair of dead zubat in his jaws, and neither Solonn nor anyone with him could dismiss the stranger as an illusion. Solonn automatically raised a protect shield around himself; out of the corner of his eye, he saw some of the other glalie in his party do likewise.

The stranger noticed them right away. “Hey!” he shouted, the zubat falling from his mouth, and as the stranger surged forward, Solonn caught a glimpse of more unfamiliar glalie rushing into the room—only to immediately lose them in a briefly-lingering burst of golden light.

The party reappeared somewhere else altogether: suddenly they were out in a snow-filled clearing in a forest of conifers, under the weak sunlight of the early morning. There was one more glalie in their midst than there should have been, and as he tore away from the others in a hurry, Solonn recognized him as the first stranger they’d seen in their previous location. They were alone with him now.

Why, Solonn wondered at once, did Oth bring that glalie with them?

The stranger lit up with a dark blue aura as he backpedaled, and Solonn realized in nearly the same instant that his own protect shield had fallen. His heart hammering, he tried to bring it back up as fast as he could, feeling the slightest relief when he succeeded.

The stranger’s eyes, already wide and blazing with obvious bewilderment and fear, gave a brilliant white flash—just as everything went gold and featureless again. The picture that followed was nearly identical to the one that had come before; the white light in the stranger’s eyes was gone, and Oth had moved a few yards forward.

The stranger looked about frantically until he found the claydol. Without really giving it any thought, Solonn tapped into the highest power of his element and kept a hold on it, ready to strike the moment the stranger’s shield fell—

—And then there was a third burst of golden light, another lingering one. The first thing Solonn saw in its wake was the now shieldless stranger dropping to the floor as an echoing crack sounded.

Solonn looked over the rest of the party to try and figure out who’d beaten him to the strike. He saw Zdir breathing heavily and staring at the unconscious glalie, and he immediately suspected the nhaza had been her doing.

Though not ungrateful, Solonn couldn’t deny that there was an easier way to have solved the trouble they’d gotten into: she’d said that they’d avoid any conflict wherever possible, and they could’ve gotten out of that situation altogether the moment it had reared its head.

He was inclined to ask why they hadn’t done just that—as it stood, it seemed like Zdir had put them in needless danger. He saw looks on the faces of the other glalie that suggested they might be thinking likewise.

<For any among you who are wondering where we are, we are in Aderi. We are far from Shoal Cave—we are safe here from anyone who would pose a threat to us,> Oth spoke up from beside the fallen glalie, fielding the question of their current whereabouts before anyone could voice it. <We are also far from Mordial,> they added for Solonn’s sake.

<Zdir has identified this person as one of the exiles,> they went on. There was a distinct unease in their mindvoice… a hesitance, Solonn thought. <As such, she believes that he is likely to have been involved with the abduction of the snorunt. He may therefore know their current location.>

A chill ran through Solonn as he looked upon the stranger, his throat going dry, the light in his eyes unsteady. It had just truly hit him: this might have been the one who took Jen. This might also have been the one who took Azvida’s life or Jeneth’s, or even both… Solonn felt his stomach turn at the thought, and he gritted his teeth.

<If it turns out this person had nothing to do with the kidnappings and murders, we will return him to Shoal Cave and resume our search.> They lowered their head very slightly. <I will now determine if that is the case, as well as if this person knows anything else that would be of use to us.>

Solonn’s eyes went wide. He’d realized at once just how Oth was going to determine those things, and he couldn’t pretend it didn’t disturb him in a deep and very personal way. He shot a rather shocked and disappointed look at Zdir—it had to have been her idea. He couldn’t imagine Oth volunteering that course of action. Not when they’d always asked for consent before looking into someone else’s mind.

“Is this really necessary?” Solonn asked her.

Zdir looked at him with an expression he couldn’t decipher. “You can’t mean what you’re asking. Surely you of all people would recognize this as something that needs to be done,” she said somberly. “You heard Oth: this person is very likely to know where the children are—probably moreso than anyone else we’re likely to encounter anytime soon. If he does know something about it, we need to know it, too.”

Offense moved swiftly into Solonn’s features; he didn’t like even the slightest suggestion that he wasn’t giving the kidnapped snorunt due concern, especially considering who was among them. “Well, yes, of course we do, but—”

“But what?” Zdir interrupted him. “Should we really take the time to wake him, deal with any further attempts to fight us or flee from us, and then try and get him to answer our questions once we’ve got him cooperating that far? That could be time that the children don’t have. We don’t know what their captors ultimately intended to do with them when they took them.”

Solonn tried to respond to her. Instead he ended up breaking eye contact with her and shutting his mouth almost as soon as he’d opened it, not knowing what to say. He wasn’t even sure what to think. He agreed with Zdir in a way; he couldn’t stand the thought of further harm befalling the snorunt, and he especially didn’t want it to happen just because they’d failed to stop it in time. But he still had a hard time agreeing with what she’d decided to do with that glalie’s mind.

Gods… why do you even care so much about him? part of him asked, reminding him who that person lying there might be and what that person might have done. Images of broken bodies in the mist-filled temple raced through his mind, images of ruined eyes on a painfully familiar face looking up at him as their owner’s life ebbed away, and he couldn’t bite back the choked, near-voiceless sob they brought from him.

Then another mental image intruded: a dragon made of blazing light with pitch-black holes for eyes. The sob sharpened into a hiss.

Solonn turned to face Oth and ask if they, at least, were fine with what they were about to do… only to find the claydol hovering before and slightly above the exile with their head lowered and all but the foremost of their eyes closed. They’d already begun their scan.

He looked away at once. It was hard enough to see someone hanging there and probing the mind of another person, enemy or not, like some kind of psychic parasite. It was even worse since that someone was his friend. He only hoped at this point that Oth’s search would bear fruit, that it would indeed lead to the children’s salvation.

Minutes passed, a wait made no easier by his awareness that searching the exile’s mind might not yield anything useful, thus resulting in precious time wasted and a mind invaded in vain. Come on, he urged Oth, at least get it over with…

Finally, <This person is indeed involved with the guilty parties, and he knows exactly where the children are being held.> Even now, with the deed done, Oth still sounded hesitant, and something of a somber tone had crept into their mindvoice, as well. This immediately struck Solonn as ominous—had Oth discovered even more bad news regarding the children? <I will be transporting us there shortly, picking up the snorunt, and then transporting them along with the rest of us and this glalie to the Haven. I am sorry to say that someone has… tampered with the children’s minds, making them believe that they belong among the exiles—hopefully the people at the Haven can undo this tampering.>

Solonn could have sworn his heart stopped for a moment at those words. The news that there was someone among their enemies who could control minds and that such a thing had been done to those children—to his own half-brother—hit him so hard and on such a personal level that he had to sit down before he could simply fall from the air. He saw the others moving toward Oth for their imminent teleportation and tried with little success to calm himself, leafing through his memories of the Haven and its various psychic therapists as he managed to rise and join the rest of the party.

The golden light lingered yet again, for longer this time, but not quite as steadily. Here and there, it tried to fade out like it always did when its passengers had reached their destination, only to pulse right back to full intensity before it could get more than a little dimmer. Every time it happened, those it carried felt a bizarre sense of only possibly having arrived somewhere.

As such, when they finally, definitely reached their destination and the light vanished completely, all but Oth and the still-unconscious exile were left fairly disoriented. The sheer contrast between where they were and where they’d been didn’t help matters.

Once he was finally convinced that he physically existed again, Solonn recognized his artificial, pale-walled, brightly-lit surroundings: he was in the Haven. He recognized something else, as well: a familiar face in a small crowd of snorunt. Relief washed over him, only to falter when he saw a fuchsia aura bloom around the children. It was Oth’s telekinetic hold, there to keep the snorunt from escaping, and it swiftly reminded him of just why they needed to be here.

Most of the snorunt started struggling almost immediately, but to no avail. “Help!” one of them called out, and a couple of the others followed suit. “Help!”

“They’re… they’re not gonna come…” another said, sounding as though he were on the brink of panic, his frantically-sweeping gaze taking in his unfamiliar surroundings. “They can’t…” Most of the shouting snorunt fell silent at his words, but one kept on, raising her voice close to its breaking point in desperation.

The sound of footsteps mingled with her cries, multiple bare feet slapping against linoleum. Solonn turned and saw a trio of chansey rushing to join the group, and he heard what was likely another one coming from the opposite direction.

“What’s going on here?” one of them asked, sounding a bit startled.

<These snorunt have been subjected to some sort of psychic tampering,> Oth answered her; the shouting snorunt went dead silent at the sound of their alien speech. <This person—> They gestured toward the exile. <—is involved with the ones responsible for this tampering.>

The chansey frowned, exchanging not-quite-readable glances with her three coworkers. Then she cast an equally inscrutable one upon the snorunt, and then the exile, and then Oth. “Go fetch Adn, please,” she said to one of the other chansey, who set off at once. “We’ll need Saul and Chandra to tend to him,” she then said with a nod toward the unconscious glalie, “and someone needs to place a call to the station.” Two of the other chansey left to carry out those instructions.

Looking up slightly toward Oth, the remaining chansey said, “Don’t worry; someone will be here to have a word with him soon, and Adn should be here to take the snorunt off of your hands any moment now. He’ll also be the one who’s going to see what can be done about this ‘tampering’ you spoke of.”

Adn… The name didn’t ring a bell, but there were a lot of little details about Convergence that Solonn couldn’t reach with so many things on his mind, one of which was almost literally right in front of him.

He looked back to the snorunt, identifying Jen as one of the still-struggling ones, and he gently nudged his way past Zereth to move closer to his half-brother. “Jen,” Solonn said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice in a desperate attempt to calm the snorunt. “It’s going to be all right,” he tried to assure Jen as well as himself. “They’re going to take care of you.”

Jen stopped struggling against his confines and looked up at the massive glalie who’d just spoken to him. Fear was written all over the snorunt’s face, but his features tightened suddenly, an imperfect and very deliberate hardening. “You’re… you’re not gonna get away with this,” he said, trying to sound tough but failing completely. “You’d better let us go!”

Solonn backed away slightly, involuntarily, the light of his eyes wavering with concern and dimmed by sadness. He sighed, disappointed despite not really being surprised. Jen had no real reason to trust him in his current condition—for all Solonn knew, his half-brother might not even recognize him at the moment. His eyelight dimmed even further.

Nonetheless, “It’ll be all right,” Solonn said again, if only for his own sake.

Once again, footsteps approached from down the hall: lighter, longer strides this time. Their source, a blue-haired gardevoir, almost seemed to glide rather than walk despite his audible steps.

“I’ll take them from here,” the gardevoir said in a warm, resonant voice, thereby identifying himself as Adn. Oth relinquished their psychic hold over the snorunt, but Adn gathered the children up in his own before they could really do anything with their newfound freedom.

“Do any of you know what sort of being is responsible for this?” Adn asked of the party, waving a hand over the snorunt.

“Well, it may take me a bit more effort if, for example, their reprogramming turns out to be the work of a ghost’s methods rather than a psychic’s, but I’m certain I’ll be able to undo it regardless of its cause.” As he spoke, he lifted the eight snorunt off the ground in unison, levitating them in midair all around him. “It just might have shaved a little time off the process if I could’ve known how to approach it from the start. They still ought to be just fine when I’m finished with them,” Adn said.

“All right, then, let’s let everyone get to their work,” the chansey who’d stayed with the group spoke up as a pair of machoke arrived on the scene to carry the exile away. “Come with me,” she said to the party, beckoning with a stubby, fingerless paw as she began to turn away.

The party followed her out of the room. Solonn glanced back at Adn and his patients, who soon moved out of sight. He hoped Adn was right to be confident in his own abilities, and he reminded himself that he’d had enough faith in the Haven to have brought it up even when he hadn’t known for sure if it was still up and running. He’ll fix this, he tried to assure himself.

The chansey led them into a fairly spacious room with a pair of large windows to the outside showing an early-evening sky over a street with sparse traffic. There were chairs lining the walls, but no one took any of them, the glalie merely seating themselves on the floor while the chansey stood by the entrance and Oth hovered close to her.

“Adn will be here with the snorunt once he’s finished treating them,” the chansey said, holding the crowd of somewhat large creatures together in her sights as best she could. “The people who’ll be questioning the other glalie you brought in will also be here later on with a few questions for you.

“In the meantime, if any of you would like some refreshments, the cafeteria is down the hall to the left,” she told them, gesturing in that direction. “There are restrooms right next to this room—don’t worry; there are instructions posted in there if you need them. And if you need anything else, just ask Catherine at the front desk, okay?” With that, the chansey left.

“Hmm…” Zdir said once the chansey was out of sight. She turned toward Solonn. “Do you know who these ‘people’ who’ll be asking us questions later are or why they want to question us? Is there any chance they think we’re the culprits?” She cocked her head slightly. “Or might they be inclined to offer us aid?”

“It’ll be someone from the police department,” Solonn reckoned aloud. “Their Security Guild,” he clarified almost immediately. “And… I can’t say if anyone is suspicious of us or not, but they’ll want to be as sure as possible before they decide that it wasn’t us.” Unlike some people… he thought bitterly.

“As for offering us aid…” he said, pausing briefly to peruse his memories of Convergence’s policies. Only then did he truly realize just how much they might’ve changed since he’d lived and worked there. “…I don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “They might only be concerned with making sure whatever we’re dealing with back home poses no threat here.”

“Depending on what this unknown, mind-altering being—or, gods help us, possibly beings—the exiles have on their side is, they might very well pose a threat here,” Zdir said grimly.

“Whatever the motives and intentions of our hosts might be, we’d probably do well to have as many answers for them as possible under the circumstances,” Ronal said.

A couple of the others nodded in agreement at this. “How much did you learn while you were looking around in there?” Narzen asked Oth, turning to face them as he spoke.

<Not as much as we might have preferred,> Oth said, <but a fair amount nonetheless. The exile is named Anzen Vin-Siara. He did not participate in the attack on the temple, but he did aid in the abductions. Those of his group call themselves the Sinaji, and their lair is in the far western areas of Shoal Cave, as far from Virc-Dho as one can go without leaving Shoal Cave entirely. Their leader—the one who, according to Anzen, reprogrammed the minds of the children—is named Sanaika Val-Harka.>

That got an immediate reaction; every face other than Zdir’s looked at the claydol incredulously. “Wait, that guy? Seriously?” Zereth asked.

“That can’t possibly be right…” Solonn said. He just couldn’t imagine the same Sanaika he’d encountered all those years ago—or any other glalie, for that matter—having the ability to warp people’s minds. There had to be something else in the equation…

“That’s what I said. I can believe that he’s their leader. That he could have done what else Anzen thinks he did, however…” Zdir shook her head. “No, that, I suspect, is just something Sanaika wants his followers to believe so he can garner more respect from them. There’s something else among them, I’m quite certain, something that people like Anzen don’t know about…”

Solonn looked away from the others, ill at ease all over again in the wake of her words. They didn’t tell him anything he hadn’t already suspected, but they did serve as a chilling reminder that the true nature of their enemy still eluded them.

He looked away and spotted a clock upon the wall next to a dark and silent television set with an “OUT OF ORDER” sign taped to its screen. How long it had been since they’d come here and how long before they could leave, he couldn’t guess. However certain Adn was that he could help the snorunt, it would surely take some time, especially with eight minds to restore. And the police might have their hands full with Anzen for a while before stopping here.

“Gods, I wish someone would get back to us…” he said aloud to no one in particular. “Or that I could have gone with him,” he added.

“That Adn guy?” Zilag guessed from beside him. Solonn made a faint, affirmative noise. “Don’t worry,” Zilag said as comfortingly as he could manage. “I’m sure he’ll be done with them soon enough. He seemed like he really knows what he’s doing.”

“He probably does,” Solonn said, even though he couldn’t help but worry to the contrary. “It’s just… the way Jen looked at me, the way he talked… I really don’t think he recognized me. It’s… it’s almost like we haven’t really got him back yet,” he said with a pained, concerned sort of frustration. “Not until Adn takes care of him.”

“Which he will,” Zilag assured him, though he still sounded a little concerned himself.

Minutes passed in relative silence. Then tapping sounds from somewhere outside the room caught the party’s attention. Solonn’s heart skipped a beat as he realized at once what they signified: they were the footsteps of snorunt. Adn had succeeded.

The gardevoir came into sight, leading the snorunt before him. The children moved with a not-quite-rhythmic, slightly uncertain gait that went with the rather confused and overwhelmed looks on their faces. Adn gently shepherded them all in before him, encouraging them to sit down among the glalie.

As they entered, Solonn noticed that something was still amiss about the snorunt: there were only seven of them. He also noticed that none of them seemed interested in approaching him, and when he looked them over, he didn’t see Jen. He shot a look at Adn, his eyes brightening in a burgeoning panic. Had the gardevoir failed Jen for some reason—or worse still, hurt him somehow?

“I’ve succeeded in restoring their memories,” Adn told the six glalie and the claydol, “and yes, with one exception, I’m afraid,” he added quickly before any of the confused or panicked people in the room could say anything.

“Why?” Solonn asked him, sounding accusatory as well as fearful despite an earnest effort to keep that question coming out as a demand. “Why can’t you fix him?”

“I can,” Adn said, unfazed by Solonn’s tone, sounding every bit as calm and confident as he had every other time he’d spoken. “It’s just going to take a bit longer than it did for the rest of them. Minds are unique—they vary in their resistance to psychic procedures, and for some reason that I’ve yet to determine, his is being particularly stubborn.”

Solonn wondered why in the world that could possibly be the case. He quickly began to fear that it was a sign of some further harm done by whatever had brainwashed Jen—harm that couldn’t be undone. Still… he glanced at the other seven children, all of them successfully deprogrammed—he wanted to believe that Jen would be among them soon. Those seven snorunt were proof that Adn had indeed known what he was doing. He’d solved their problems. Solonn wanted to have faith that the gardevoir would solve Jen’s, as well.

“You’re sure you can help him,” he said, reaching for confirmation, for anything that could help him feel certain that things would turn out all right.

“Absolutely,” Adn said, kindness and reassurance playing about his orange eyes. “Don’t worry, any of you. However long it takes, I’ll make sure that he—”

Quite suddenly, thoroughly unexpectedly, the gardevoir’s voice dropped out, as did all sound. An all too familiar golden emptiness filled the air, lingering for more than a moment and wavering ever so briefly at one point.

When it faded out completely, the Haven was gone with it. Stone surfaces had replaced the painted walls; a wide tunnel winding out of sight had replaced the waiting room. All of the glalie were still present, as were Oth and the seven snorunt who’d been successfully treated. There was no sign of the gardevoir who’d been speaking to them the moment before.

Inexplicably, they had teleported, leaving Convergence behind.

Multiple pairs of blue eyes looked about in confusion, their owners rising in near unison, with several of them turning to the only one there who could’ve pulled them out of the Haven in such a way. “What… Oth, why did you do that?” Solonn couldn’t help but ask, his voice barely above a whisper.

<I… I did not mean to teleport,> Oth said, and they actually sounded rather afraid. <The thought of doing so never even crossed my mind…>

“Well, you need to get us back there!” Solonn hissed. He had to get back to Jen—the thought of leaving him behind was unacceptable as it was, but doing so while the snorunt’s well-being still hung in the balance…

Oth gave no obvious response at first. A few seconds passed, and then they emitted a noise that might have indicated worry, frustration, or both, briefly shutting all of their eyes as if trying to focus harder on something. <I cannot get it to happen… I cannot even find the energy to access for its use!>

“Keep trying!” Solonn urged them, now fearing for both Jen and Oth. What in the world could have made them teleport—and was the same thing involuntarily suppressing their powers now?

“Where are we?” one of the snorunt spoke up, plainly fearful.

“Well… I don’t think we know yet,” Zilag answered him quietly. There was a hint of unease in his voice that suggested an answer might be occurring to him, and not one that he liked. “Do we?” he asked of the others.

It seemed no one else among them knew exactly where they were, either. Solonn only knew that their current location put them all at considerable risk; if they were spotted by the wrong people now, especially with those children in tow… He felt sick just thinking about it, and he could tell by the looks on the other glalie’s faces that they were having similar thoughts and feelings about the situation.

“So… now what do we do?” Narzen asked.

“We go home!” the snorunt who had spoken last said. “Please, I just wanna go home!”

“Yeah!” another one said.

There was a brief silence. Then, “Yes. We’re going home,” Zdir said. “I’m going to try and remember the way from here. Now, I won’t lie to you: it might get scary on the way there, but we’ll protect you. We promise.” There were several noises of assent and nods from Oth and the other glalie at those words. Zdir looked down the tunnel in one direction and then the other, deep in thought. She looked to Oth for a moment, the claydol nodding at something she’d just told them privately.

“Come on,” she then said. “Now, don’t be afraid of what Oth’s about to do,” she told the children. “They’re only going to carry you so that you don’t have to walk and so that no one will hear you walking. Just try to relax as best as you can and try not to talk unless it’s really important.”

With that, Oth telekinetically took hold of the seven snorunt and lifted them a few inches off the ground, at which a couple of them couldn’t help but gasp or yelp despite Zdir’s assurances.

“Shhh…” Zdir reminded them. “As for the rest of you,” she said to her party, “if at any point you realize where we are and how to get back to Virc-Dho from there, let me know. You can take the lead from there.”

Zdir began moving forward, and everyone else followed, with the adults surrounding the children. The tunnel they traveled through led them on a path that was winding but as-yet unbroken. But sooner or later, it was sure to branch out. They’d be forced to stop and choose a direction—Solonn hoped Zdir would pick the right one.

When they finally did stop, the sight before them pushed those concerns aside.

If the sight before the party hadn’t already stopped them in their figurative tracks, the sound that came with it—a long and incredibly loud roar, six powerful voices calling out in unison—certainly would have. The snorunt and glalie and the single claydol in their midst now stared at a cluster of walrein blocking their path. Each of the bulky, blue creatures wore an expression that told all too clearly that they weren’t interested in letting the party pass without giving them a hard time about it.

Solonn eyed the foremost of the walrein warily. The Virc didn’t encounter them anywhere near as often as they came across spheal and sealeo. They generally left walrein alone whenever they did stumble upon them, and with good reason. Those who’d gotten on the bad side of one hadn’t come away unscathed, and their tales of those encounters had spread—all Virc glalie knew of the strength, resilience, and dangerous tusks of the walrein.

Taking on just one of them was generally considered risky, and here were six—a potential threat even given their own numbers. The party had planned to simply teleport away from walrein if they ran afoul of them, but that was no longer an option. Now, with the children still in their custody and something clearly wrong with Oth, Solonn wished more than ever that it still was.

<We apologize, sirs,> Oth spoke up. A couple of the walrein’s eyes darted around momentarily, trying to pinpoint the source of the words without sound. The rest of the walrein guessed where it had come from right away, casting an acknowledging and appraising glance at the claydol. Then they went right back to staring the glalie down. <We did not mean to startle you, and we do not mean any harm,> Oth went on. <We merely need to pass through—we must bring these children home. We will not cause any trouble for you in the process.>

The foremost of the walrein drew a deep breath, his already broad chest expanding greatly. “I don’t know who you are,” he said in a booming voice, still keeping his eyes locked onto the glalie in front of him as he spoke, “let alone what. But I reckon you’re not from around here, and I imagine you haven’t been given the most complete picture of how things work around here if you’ve chosen to ally yourself with those creatures. At any rate, no, you’re not passing through, not any of you.”

He’d had to raise his voice on those last few words; a great thundering noise had arisen and was growing louder by the second. A large crowd of sealeo was amassing behind the walrein, and from what Solonn could see, they looked even less hospitable than the walrein had.

“I won’t attack children of any kind,” the apparent spokesman of the walrein went on, “and neither will any of my men here, but they…” He gave a quick, backwards jerk of his head toward the crowd behind him. “They might not be so inclined to show that kind of mercy.”

<With all due respect, sir… do you have any authority over them?> Oth asked.

“We do. But at the same time, we understand their caution may well have saved their lives or their loved ones in the past. Now then, if you’re really interested in getting those children home safely, you won’t push your luck in here. Go find some other route to take,” the foremost walrein said, and his tone told that he was done discussing the matter.

There was a moment that was silent save for the shuffling about of restless sealeo. Solonn worried that they might decide to just charge and try to drive the party away, or worse. It was surprising that they hadn’t done so already.

Then, <We will go. Again, we apologize.> To the rest of the party, <Go quickly, but not too quickly. Zdir does not entirely trust that the sealeo will not charge after us, and neither do I, but we must stay together.>

Not quite in unison, the glalie turned around. The party began making their retreat in nearly the same instant. The sounds of the sealeo were still audible, including something that suggested flippers slapping against stone. For a moment, Solonn was sure that he and the rest of the party really were being pursued, but all those sounds grew softer rather than louder as they left the creatures further behind. Seconds passed, and Oth gave no indication that anyone was following them.

Eventually, <Stop,> Oth said. <We are back where we began. I… regret to inform you that I remain unable to teleport,> they said heavily. <We have no choice but to take the opposite route from here this time. Again, if any of you recognize our surroundings at any point, please let us know.>

Zdir made her way to the front once more as the claydol spoke, and Solonn looked at her with uncertainty as she moved past him. Maybe she’d simply made a mistake leading them to the walrein and sealeo, and the opposite path was the one that led back to Virc-Dho all along. But there was also the possibility that she’d chosen correctly the first time, that the right way back to the warren—and maybe the only way—was now impassable. They were more lost than ever before if that was the case. He caught a look on Zdir’s face as she passed that suggested similar concerns, as well as a hint of embarrassment and apology in the way her eyelight fluctuated.

As the party moved out, Solonn tried to focus on the lingering possibility that Oth would regain the ability to teleport before the party could get hopelessly lost or run into any more trouble. The fact that it was still just a possibility made it hard for Solonn to be too optimistic about the situation. Neither he nor anyone else even knew exactly what was wrong with Oth, though Solonn still harbored dark suspicions about the way that guard back at the holding cell had treated them. He had very little understanding of how a claydol’s body worked; for all he knew, too much exposure to hostile elements could damage whatever mechanism allowed them to teleport, and perhaps permanently.

Please, gods… don’t let that be the case. Please let them heal…

At length, the path split. Both branches led leftward, with the main route curving out of sight a relatively short distance past the entrance to an offshoot in the left wall. After a few moments’ worth of tight-browed consideration, Zdir guided the party into the farther path.

That path ultimately turned out to be a dead end, opening into a somewhat large, oddly-shaped room. Solonn prepared to turn back around and saw Zereth already turning, but Zdir stayed put and looked as though she were thinking.

Then, <We will stop and rest here for a while,> Oth announced; Zdir began leading the rest of the party well into the room, away from the exit, as the claydol spoke. <I will make further attempts to teleport while we are here.>

Most of the glalie put a little bit more space between themselves and the snorunt and sat down, many of them leaning against the walls. Zdir remained where she was, staying airborne, and she turned to face the children as Oth lowered them to the floor. Some of the snorunt looked confused or worried, while a couple of the others looked annoyed.

“Now, don’t stray, any of you,” Zdir said in a quiet, gentle tone once Oth had relinquished their hold on the snorunt completely. “The ones who took you are still out there, and until we get you back home, we’re the only ones who can protect you from them.

“Speaking of the ones who took you…” she went on, “can any of you tell me anything about the one who tampered with your minds, made you believe things that weren’t true?”

All of the snorunt shook their heads or said “no” in one way or another.

“I don’t think we were awake when it happened… were we?” one of the slightly larger, presumably older ones asked of the others, which sent another wave of negatory responses through the children. “I was at the snowgrounds just minding my own business—we all were—and then a couple of glalie showed up. They knocked out Jeril right away. Her and Seska. We couldn’t get out of there. Pretty soon, they got all of us.”

“I tried to fight back,” the snorunt at her side said, looking proud for a moment, but wilted just as quickly, looking aside. “…It didn’t work.”

“At least you tried,” said the snorunt who had been speaking previously. She sounded a bit regretful, even ashamed. “But anyway, yeah. Next thing I knew, I woke up somewhere else, and I thought I’d always been there.”

Zdir nodded in acknowledgment, drawing and releasing a deep breath with a look of disappointment. “Is that what all of you remember, more or less?” she asked, at which the snorunt all nodded in near-unison.

“I’m sorry I can’t remember any more about it,” another of them said quietly, earnestly.

There was a quick flash in her eyes, and a small pile of snow appeared just beside her. She moved back a bit, and Oth went over to her side a moment later. “Eat,” Zdir told the snorunt. “You’ve certainly earned it.” Four of the snorunt obliged right away, with the rest only hesitating briefly before digging in. She watched them for a moment, then turned to face most of the other glalie.

<Are there any among you who have not successfully hunted in the past couple of days?> Oth asked.

That question seized Solonn’s attention at once. His eyes widening slightly, he looked over the snorunt, not knowing for sure how they might react to such a question… but found them all just sitting there and eating snow, giving no indication that they’d even heard the last thing Oth had said. Oth had transmitted the message to the glalie alone.

Solonn had to stop and think about Oth’s question for a moment. The last few relatively mundane hours preceding the hell that had broken loose in Virc-Dho were hard to reach. He finally managed to remember having hunted shortly before he’d gone to sleep the night before the attack, and he was fairly sure that fell within the time frame Oth had just inquired about. He looked back toward the claydol and shook his head.

Someone else had apparently done the opposite; <I am afraid you will have to make do with ice until the children have returned to Virc-Dho,> Oth said. <Zdir believes that hunting in their presence might disturb them too greatly. She wishes for them to remain as calm as possible, for the sake of their safety and our own.>

That made sense—no one needed to be losing their heads at a time like this. Solonn just hoped that no one, including himself, would be weakened too much by the lack of proper food. Ice could occupy the stomach, could pacify hunger to a degree, but without meat, the glalie in the party would start getting weak and sick before too much longer.

Solonn conjured up a moderately sized block of ice in front of himself. The rest of the glalie served themselves likewise. Though he still felt oddly disconnected from the hunger he ought to be feeling by now, he started in on the ice right away, trying not to eat too slowly. The party should and probably would move on before much longer.

As he fed, he saw Oth and Zdir make their way over to Narzen, who looked up from his ice with a questioning expression. Narzen maintained eye contact with Oth, and he nodded a couple of times over the seconds that followed. His expression changed from vague disappointment to something that suggested he was intrigued by something, and then to something that looked rather eager.

Oth and Zdir then moved away from Narzen, leaving Solonn to wonder what that silent, one-sided conversation had been about. That question moved aside when he saw Oth and Zdir stop in front of Zilag and start up a similar conversation with him.

Solonn frowned in puzzlement, wondering what the two of them—or rather just Zdir, he imagined—could’ve seen fit to discuss one-on-one with the others rather than saying it to the entire party at once. He suspected they weren’t discussing the same thing with Zilag as they had with Narzen, however; Zdir had a more serious expression while Oth spoke to Zilag, and this conversation wore on longer than the last.

It was all too clear that the topic was unsettling Zilag to some degree. But at the same time, Zilag seemed to respond affirmatively to every silent question, and Zdir looked satisfied with those responses.

The two drifted away from Zilag and back to the snorunt. Zilag still looked troubled, and Solonn felt an urge to go over to him and ask what that had been all about.

But before he could, <Zdir wishes to know if anyone else among you wants to stay in Virc-Dho when we return the children,> Oth spoke up.

Solonn was shaking his head before he’d realized he was doing so. He was a fugitive, and a fairly recognizable one at that. Showing his face in the warren was a bad idea, and he got the distinct, unpleasant feeling that it would be for a long time—possibly forever, much as he hated to consider it.

<Very well, then,> Oth said. <If any of you change your minds later, please let me know. Even if we have already returned the children by that point, we will help you get back to the warren.>

Zdir looked pleased enough with the silent answers the rest of the glalie had given her, returning her attention to her ice and sending no further messages through Oth for the time being.

Solonn, meanwhile, was less at ease with the matter. Something in the way Oth had asked about it had struck him and struck him hard: if anyone else among you wishes to be left in Virc-Dho, they’d said. Perhaps by “anyone else” they’d been referring to Zdir, but he promptly dismissed the thought; Zdir had the same good reason not to return that he had, and he was sure she knew it. Instead he suspected that Oth was referring to Narzen and Zilag—that the matter of whether or not they wanted to go back to Virc-Dho was what those private conversations had been about, and that they’d both said “yes”.

This didn’t really come as a surprise, at least not where Zilag was concerned. Of course Zilag would want to go back home to his family. Solonn just wasn’t sure if it would really be safe for Zilag or anyone else in the party to do so.

Once again, he’d remembered the lahain knowing his name back in the council chamber, and once again, he’d wondered just what else the Virc authorities saw fit to know. This time, however, it had occurred to him that maybe they already knew whom he associated with. If they did know such things, then the authorities would likely look to those associates for any information that might help them track down the fugitives. And if they decided those associates weren’t cooperating enough to suit them… Solonn swallowed hard, feeling as though the rest of his ice had just tried to force itself down his throat at once.

But then something else crossed his mind: Zdir had been one of them. Part of the council. She likely knew what they knew, in which case she’d probably know whether or not Zilag and Narzen would be in that kind of danger. And if they were, then she wouldn’t let them go home, would she?

That, he couldn’t answer. He sort of figured she wouldn’t, given how she hadn’t been able to stand the thought of leaving innocent people trapped in the Security Guild’s custody. Still, the possibility that Zilag and Narzen might face trouble from the guild upon returning sent fresh currents of worry through his nerves.

That was yet another reason to hope Oth would be able to teleport again soon, as if they needed any more. If anyone who decided to stay in Virc-Dho got thrown into the Security Guild’s cells, he could see no other feasible way to free them.

<We will now resume our journey toward Virc-Dho,> Oth said, sounding regretful, and telekinetically gathered up the children once more. As the other glalie began to rise and cluster around the snorunt, Solonn hurriedly finished his ice, then quickly got up to join the others. The party and their charges departed the cavern and went back out into the unknown, with Solonn still concerned about what might happen after reaching their destination in addition to what might happen on the way there.

The party backtracked to the fork in the road, taking the other route this time. Not long afterward, they were met with another fork and subsequently ran into another dead end, but they didn’t stop there, and they only made a brief stop for necessities at the third dead end they encountered.

Meanwhile, nothing of their surroundings looked familiar in the least, and no one had given any indication that they recognized anything around them since Zdir had. Maybe that wasn’t the place she thought it was after all, Solonn considered dismally. It truly seemed that they were traveling blind at this point—and there was the chance, he couldn’t help but consider, that they were headed straight for the Sinaji’s lair.

That thought sent a fresh bolt of fear into him. Before he had long to dwell on it, however, <Solonn! This place… we have been here, have we not?>

Being addressed directly when he hadn’t been expecting it startled him at first; he threw a gaze about, but couldn’t seem to connect any of what he saw to anything he could remember.

Then his wits congealed once more, his eyes widening, and he nodded at Oth as he realized that yes, he and the claydol had been here before, and recently at that. He’d been here alone several times beforehand, as a matter of fact. This was simply his first time looking at it from this angle.

Oth had moved to the front of the party and was now leading them toward an irregularity in the path ahead, which turned out to be a large, deep hole in the floor. The party had managed to stumble upon Grosh’s home.

Oth came to a stop at the edge of the pit, and they once again relinquished their hold over the children. <Be careful not to fall in,> they warned them.

The claydol leaned forward, peering down into the hole in silence. Next to them, Zdir was doing likewise, wearing a look of contemplation. She nodded at something no one but the two of them could hear.

<Solonn… do you suppose your father would mind if we were to take shelter here while he is away?> Oth asked.

Solonn quickly realized where Oth was going with this. When he and Oth had been on their way to visit Grosh, he’d told them how the steelix had remained undisturbed in that hole for so many years. If such a creature had stayed hidden there for so long, then maybe the party could avoid being noticed there, too.

Solonn figured Grosh would have no problem at all with them using his home to stay safe—if anything, the steelix would be elated to know that he could help them, even if only in some distant, indirect way.

Gods… he’d be happy just to know we’re alive, he recognized, which made him rather heartsick. Solonn nodded to Oth in response to their question, silently praying that the steelix he answered for would reunite with his home and what remained of his family before much longer.

<All right, then,> the claydol said. <I have proposed that we stop here to rest for a while, longer than any of our previous stops,> they announced, which earned a groan from one of the snorunt. <This—> They gestured toward the hole with one of their turret-hands, the other still clutching the herbs that they’d gathered to their chest. <—has been the home of one of our allies for many years. He is elsewhere at this time, but I have assurances that he would not mind us staying here in his absence.

<Given a bit more time to rest, I may finally be able to teleport us to the warren. I sincerely hope that I will be. If not, that tunnel,> Oth said, pointing toward a passageway off to the left, <ultimately leads back to Virc-Dho, but fear not—it is a scarcely-traveled route. People virtually never come here. Our hope is that we may be able to avoid notice here, or at least likelier to avoid it than we might be anywhere else that we can presently reach.>

In truth, that’s all it was: a hope. Still, it was better than nothing, and Solonn reckoned that a good, long rest really could help the claydol recover. That would make the final phase of their rescue mission much easier to pull off without any further trouble. And resting out of sight in that pit was certainly preferable to doing so out in the open.

An ice platform appeared, covering the hole in the floor. Solonn looked to Zdir, saw the brightened light in her eyes, and figured she was responsible for it.

She moved out onto the platform once it was level with the floor, and Ronal followed her, but she shook her head when Solonn and Zereth tried to do likewise.

<Zdir and Ronal wish to make sure no one else is down there before the children are allowed to descend, just in case,> Oth explained.

As Solonn watched the platform slowly carry Zdir and Ronal downward, the light from the two glalie’s eyes dwindling as they went deeper into the chasm, a thread of concern for them uncurled in his mind despite the fact that he still doubted they’d find anyone down there. He didn’t question Zdir’s choice on the matter; he understood that no one else here—not even Oth, really—had as much reason as he did to believe this place was so rarely disturbed. Now that he thought about it, it occurred to him that maybe he was taking the safety of the pit before him for granted.

Before long, though, <They confirm that it is empty,> Oth said, and the platform rose again as the claydol spoke. There was no one on it as it ascended; Zdir and Ronal had presumably gone into the chamber next to the chasm.

Since the platform was too small to bring everyone else down in a single trip, Oth directed Narzen and Zilag to go and sit down on it next. The claydol went to hover over their heads, assuring the glalie that they’d attend to the snorunt on this descent and assuring the snorunt that they wouldn’t drop any of them in the process. Only a couple of the snorunt looked comforted by the claydol’s words as the fuchsia aura surrounded the children once more, and one of them failed to bite back a whimper as they drifted downward through the air after the sinking platform. Not long after, the platform rose once more, and the rest of the party rode it into the depths.

Grosh’s home lacked some of its familiarity as Solonn now beheld it. With more people gathered in the chamber further inside than he’d ever seen there before, it seemed smaller than he remembered. It was much brighter as well, with the light from so many eyes illuminating it.

“When can we leave?” one of the snorunt asked.

<We will leave once we have all had a chance to rest properly,> Oth answered.

The snorunt who’d just spoken frowned. “But I don’t like this. I don’t like hiding in a hole when we could be going home. You said you knew where home is, right?”

“We do,” Zdir said. “But Oth might not be feeling well. They might be hurt. We want to give them a chance to recover before we continue.”

The snorunt narrowed his eyes slightly, holding Zdir’s gaze, looking as though he were trying to decide whether he liked her response well enough or not. Finally, shooting a glance at Oth, “You’d better hurry up and get better,” he said, then stalked off to sit against the wall. Several of the other snorunt seated themselves as well, as did most of the glalie.

<In the event that I… do not recover during our time here or at any other point prior to our arrival at Virc-Dho,> Oth said, another of those psychic transmissions that excluded the children, <we have decided on an alternate means of getting the children beyond its border. For their safety, Narzen has agreed to escort them into the warren. He has also agreed to having a link established with me prior to doing so. This will allow him to keep us informed of happenings within the warren.>

Out of the corner of his eye, Solonn saw Zereth shudder slightly. A bit to the right, he saw Narzen with that odd, eager look on his face again—it seemed that Zdir had approached the right person about being the party’s eyes and ears back in Virc-Dho.

At any rate, Solonn was starting to like the thought of them having one of their own in that position. They could know if Narzen were in trouble, either through his transmissions via Oth or the conspicuous lack thereof, and Narzen could also tell them if anyone else who chose to stay in the warren was in any trouble.

He’ll have other things to keep an eye on, Solonn had to tell himself. He can’t spend the entire time guarding Zilag and his family.

<For now, we should try to rest as soon as we can,> Oth went on; the children apparently heard them this time, all of them turning to face the claydol. <One of us will keep watch at all times, and we will take shifts. Who wishes to go first?>

“I’ll do it,” Ronal said simply, rising, and he moved over to sit in the imperfect archway separating the two chambers.

Oth set about trying to fall asleep right away then, and the blue light filling the room gradually dimmed as most of the glalie and snorunt eventually followed suit. Solonn lay there, eyes closed, but remained awake as the time passed. Concerns about the party’s future and Jen and Grosh’s present, and even the knowledge that he probably wouldn’t get to sleep for long before someone prodded him awake, kept him too preoccupied to sleep. Above him, unbeknownst to him, ice crept over the ceiling, and the thoughts that attended him marred its surface with aimless, crooked lines that kept abruptly changing direction as if twitching.

At some point, he gave up trying to sleep for the time being. The moment he sat back up and opened his eyes, there was Zereth.

“You want to go next?” Zereth whispered.

Solonn glanced at the archway and found it unoccupied. Ronal was lying nearby, seemingly asleep, and Solonn realized that it was Zereth who was just finishing his shift. Solonn hadn’t noticed when Zereth had relieved Ronal of watch duties; he wondered if any others’ shifts had come and gone without him noticing.

Hoping he’d be more attentive in the task that was being offered to him, Solonn nodded and rose, taking his position in the archway. He tried to stay focused on the unoccupied chamber before him in case anything unwelcome descended into it, but only mostly succeeded.

It helped somewhat that some part of him was already dwelling on the possibility of someone finding them. It also helped that every so often, as he gazed out into the emptiness in front of him, he thought he heard scraping, rustling, or some other noise that compelled him to investigate. Every furtive look that he stole up the chasm showed him nothing, leaving him to chalk each of those sounds up to his mind playing tricks on him. Still, no matter how many times it happened, the first thing that crossed his mind whenever he heard something was the chance that they might have company.

“Hey. Been on watch for very long?”

The words were only whispered, but they sent a jolt through Solonn as if they’d been screeched right in his ear. He bit back a hiss and turned to identify the speaker—it was Zilag—then turned back to stare into the empty chamber once more.

“I don’t know,” Solonn admitted just as voicelessly. He heard Zilag sit down beside him. “I don’t feel like sleeping in the least, though. I think I can stay here a while longer. Go ahead and get some more sleep for now, if you want.”

“Hm. Don’t really feel much like sleeping right now myself, to be honest,” Zilag said. “Besides which… I don’t know. I guess I just kind of feel like you could use as much of a break as you can get after… well, you know. Especially considering what the folks back home decided to do to you and Oth and your dad afterward.”

Solonn turned a surprised glance toward Zilag, but that surprise faded quickly as he realized when and how Zilag must’ve learned about the lahain’s decision. “Zdir and Oth told you about that, didn’t they?” he asked, at which Zilag nodded. “And you believe what they said, right?” Solonn asked, unable to help himself, hearkening back to the way Zilag had spoken before leaving home.

Zilag sighed. “I’ll be honest with you: if your dad were anyone, anything else, I’d be a bit more skeptical. But I know how they feel about him, how… how deep it is, you know? Hell, I even felt a little bit of it myself the first time you took me to see him,” he admitted, looking away guiltily.

“Mm,” Solonn responded dismissively to that. “Don’t worry about that; I used to feel that, too. But anyway… since you do know what happened… what had to be done,” he said carefully, “you know they’ll surely want information at the very least, and they’re likely to see you as a good source. And if they don’t like your answers, they might…” He swallowed, suddenly especially concerned that his next words would make him sound paranoid, less credible. “They might just decide against taking chances and just put you out of commission, same as they did with me.”

“Yeah, she told me that, too. She says she doesn’t think they’re too likely to do that, but she wanted me to know they might, said she couldn’t in good conscience let me go without me knowing what I might be getting myself into.

“And I won’t lie: she had me pretty worried there for a moment, and there’s part of me that still is,” Zilag said. “But… well, I gave it thought; don’t think for a moment I didn’t. It’s been in and out of my head this whole time since, in fact. And what occurred to me is that yes, going back’s a risk, but so’s staying out here. Who’s to say that someone—maybe even the folks back home—won’t find us somewhere out here? If anything, honestly, it would probably look worse for me if I were found along with all of you than if I were approached alone.”

“And besides which…” Zilag went on, “besides which, Hledas and the kids are still back there. I know that Hledas at the very least is probably worrying herself sick about me, and Kavir might be starting to get worried by now, too. Even Ryneika might be starting to sense that things are off. I can’t let them go on worrying about me for much longer, Solonn. I just can’t.”

Solonn nodded in solemn understanding. His own thoughts drifted out toward Mordial, toward the steelix who was surely fretting both for him and for Jen at that very moment, and he winced at the pang of guilt that those thoughts brought.

“Just… be careful, all right?” he said.

“You know I have no intentions of doing otherwise,” Zilag responded.

“Hm…” Solonn didn’t question that in the least, but he found it hard to be confident that Zilag’s caution would suffice. What he really wanted was for Zilag not to have to be so careful at all, and the only way such a thing seemed possible at this point was for Zilag and his family to be relocated.

“Maybe,” he said, “when Oth has recovered… if they recover,” he forced himself to add, much as he didn’t want to, “we could get you and your family out of there. You could leave Virc-Dho for somewhere safer.”

Zilag’s eyes flickered a bit, and he nodded slightly. “Well… we’ll get all this sorted out when the time comes, all right? My family, yours, these kids here… we’ll get it all taken care of. In the meantime, go and try to get yourself some rest,” he suggested gently. “I’ll go ahead and take over for you.”

Solonn hesitated at first, but then nodded in acquiescence and returned to the chamber where the others slept, still doubting as he sat back down that he’d see any sleep that night.

When he rolled onto his back and his eyes met the ceiling once more, he saw what he’d unknowingly done up there. Solonn looked at the patterns, the results of him unconsciously reaching out to his mother element for solace, and decided, albeit only half-wittingly, to seek his element once more. Hopefully he could vanish into it as he’d done so many times before—no thoughts for a little while, no fears, just that connection. In doing so, maybe he’d finally get some rest.

Solonn opened his eyes. It seemed he’d been right about being unable to sleep for the time being. Sighing in resignation, he sat up yet again. Soon after, he took to looking in a different direction every so often, figuring it couldn’t hurt to have an extra pair of eyes watching over the party.

He looked out toward the exit, and at the same time, the glalie hovering there looked back into the chamber where everyone else still lay sleeping. It was Zereth who was currently keeping watch, and this struck Solonn as odd in a detached way; hadn’t Zereth already done his shift? But the strangeness of the situation vanished from Solonn’s mind before it could truly light there, and the fact that Zereth didn’t actually seem to see him couldn’t quite take root there, either.

The loud scraping noise that broke the silence in the next moment had no trouble seizing his attention at all, and it sent a spike of terror straight into his heart.

Much faster than he’d ever seen anyone make the descent, an ice platform brought a group of strangers down into the adjacent chamber. Zereth, still facing away from the shaft leading upward, seemed completely oblivious to their arrival—Solonn opened his mouth to alert him and the rest of the party, but couldn’t get a single syllable out before the intruders poured through the archway, far more than could fit on a single platform, filling the space around them with their eyelight. As if he were vaporized, Zereth simply vanished as they rushed past him.

Solonn tried to shout again, bringing up a protect aura to surround himself and attempting a nhaza against one of the attackers as he did so, but neither his voice nor his powers answered his summons. Feeling his heart rate easily triple, he tried charging at one of the invading glalie instead—only to find that he couldn’t move.

On the verge of panic, Solonn made attempt after attempt to rise and defend the party and children however he could, but he still couldn’t move an inch or command any of his abilities. The intruders didn’t seem to notice him struggling there at all, but before his eyes, he saw them smash and tear into everyone else. Cries of pain and fear rang out, and the air became heavy with blood mist, and all the while he couldn’t do anything—

The horrible picture before Solonn’s eyes abruptly changed into an entirely different scene. Still, there was a delay before he truly recognized that there was no one there who shouldn’t be, that barring anything that might still be wrong with Oth, everyone around him was all right.

Oh, thank the gods… he thought, taking a deep breath of blessedly clear, mist-free air in an attempt to calm nerves that still couldn’t quite believe the dream was over, feeling his pulse reluctantly slowing back down.

“Come on, move aside,” he heard Zdir say quietly. He turned and saw her gently shepherding the snorunt closer to the walls, clearing a space in the middle of the room where she soon conjured another small snow pile.

<The rest of you should feed yourselves, as well,> Oth said, and the tone of their mindvoice told all too clearly that a night’s rest hadn’t replenished their power as they’d hoped. <We will be heading back out into the caverns above soon.>

Solonn looked at the claydol with dismay for a couple of moments. Something inside him offered up a silent reminder that it had been less than a day since Oth had lost the ability to teleport. Maybe it wouldn’t be much longer before they recovered. Still, the possibility that they simply wouldn’t recover seemed to loom larger than ever. So did the possibility that he’d never see Grosh or Jen again, and that anyone who ran into trouble in the warren would be unreachable.

He still didn’t know for sure if anyone else who’d decide to go back home was aware of the potential threat posed by the Virc authorities. There was a chance that Zdir might have warned them during those private conversations back in the warren; though he’d been within partial earshot of them, he’d had too much on his mind at the time to pay any real attention to what they were saying. At the very least, she might have had Oth run that matter by Narzen.

Still, he had to be sure. He approached Zdir, who turned a questioning gaze up at him at once.

“There’s something I need to know,” he said, whispering.

Zdir raised an eyebrow. “And that is…?”

“The others… do they know?” he asked. “About what was done to Father and to Oth and me, I mean. About what certain people might want from them, considering who they associate with.”

“Of course they do,” Zdir assured him. “All of them, including your friend. I made certain.”

A small wave of relief washed over Solonn. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Now go on, get yourself fed so we can move out soon.”

Solonn did as he was advised, and once again he found himself having to rush to finish when everyone else was ready to go. Soon, Zdir and Ronal were riding an ice platform back up toward the surface, and it wasn’t long before everyone else had come up, as well. With that, the party set off, leaving Grosh’s home behind.

Apart from a pair of zubat who immediately turned tail and fled as they drew near, they encountered no other living souls as they closed more and more of the remaining distance to Virc-Dho. In passing through the former walrein territory again, they found it empty save for scattered shells of some unknown marine creature, just like last time.

Perhaps the walrein and sealeo they’d run into the day before had come from here. Solonn wondered if such creatures really could have moved so far since the last time he’d been here prior to the attack, which hadn’t been terribly long before—from what he’d seen, they were rather ungainly. Meant more for the water than for the land, his mother had said of them once.

Then it occurred to him that the walrein and their people might have already departed the area sometime before he’d brought Oth along to visit Grosh—as he thought about it, he didn’t remember giving terribly much mind to his surroundings at the time, knowing the path by heart and being fairly preoccupied with conversation en route.

Solonn hoped the former inhabitants of this place really had just relocated of their own accord, by their own power. The possibility, however remote, that they might’ve been whisked away by some unknown teleporter in league with the Sinaji still brought a shudder whenever he thought of it.

There eventually came a point where he could see that the path up ahead was crossed by another, a landmark Solonn recognized as a sign that they were nearing the border-cavern. But before they could reach that intersection, <Raise your shields and retreat at once!> Oth called out suddenly, and Solonn didn’t hesitate in the slightest to obey that command—he’d seen what provoked it himself. There’d been glalie passing by through the tunnel that crossed their path, heading for Virc-Dho. The intersection had been just far enough ahead that there was still some hope that the party hadn’t been spotted; nonetheless, they swiftly moved more than half the distance from it again before Oth indicated that they could stop.

Some of the blue eyes that surrounded the claydol cast questioning gazes at them or at Zdir, while others warily eyed the intersection from which they’d all just fled. <Zdir recognized those glalie as members of the Security Guild,> Oth said to the glalie alone. To everyone present, they said, <There were some people up ahead, and we could not tell for certain whether they were friend or foe. Since they are heading toward Virc-Dho, we will wait here for a brief while before proceeding, long enough to put some more distance between them and us. Hopefully we will avoid any more close calls with them.>

Solonn continued to stare at the intersection ahead, more than half-expecting the guild members or someone else he didn’t want to run into to appear there at any moment, but minutes passed with no such thing happening. Eventually, Oth indicated that Zdir felt it was safe to continue.

When they reached the mouth of the narrow, curving passageway that led into the border-cavern, however, voices sounded from the chamber beyond. Moving ahead now would once again put them at risk of being noticed by the wrong people.

Solonn expected Oth to command them to turn back, but no such instructions came. Putting his protect ability on standby, he turned toward Zdir and found her with that familiar look of deep thought on her face. He frowned, hoping to all gods that she’d decide what the party was going to do quickly, all too aware that the owners of those voices could choose to head their way at any moment.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, but it was only Zilag nodding at something. Solonn was immediately sure that Zdir had just had Oth tell Zilag something, and he wondered what it could have been.

<Zdir is going to try and listen in on the conversation in the border cavern from out of sight to try to identify the nature of the speakers,> the claydol announced; once again, they spoke only to the glalie. <If she is able to determine that there are Security Guild members among them and no Sinaji, she will send the children ahead on their own into the border cavern and the guild’s custody. Narzen will stay with us, and I will be establishing a link with Zilag instead. We will allow some time to pass between sending the children into the border cavern and sending Zilag into the warren—hopefully this will reduce the likelihood of anyone believing that he had anything to do with them.>

Solonn stared at Oth for a second, surprised by the change of plans. His eyes darted to Narzen and then Zilag—the former didn’t look nearly as disappointed as Solonn had expected, given how keen Narzen had seemed on the previous plan. Apparently, however much that idea had appealed to Narzen, the idea of staying out with the fugitives appealed to him even more. Zilag looked less at ease, but the fact that he’d consented to the link at all gave Solonn the impression that he was entirely over any mistrust he might’ve held for the claydol, or at least almost entirely over it. Solonn managed to send a small, approving smile his way.

Zdir proceeded into the curving tunnel, and several moments that felt like several minutes passed with her out of sight. Come on, hurry before someone finds us here… he urged her, shooting a quick glance back toward the other entrance to the cavern they presently occupied, still fully aware that the glalie in the border cavern weren’t the only ones the party had to worry about.

But before much longer Zdir returned, looking fairly relieved. Soon thereafter, Oth set the children back on their feet, and the fuchsia aura that had surrounded them vanished. <The voices coming from up ahead belong to Security Guild members,> Oth said, their mindvoice sounding just as relieved as Zdir had sounded, and the way the snorunt all looked up at Oth when they spoke told that they hadn’t excluded the children this time.

The claydol lowered their head slightly toward the snorunt. <What all of you—> Their free hand drifted away from the rest of their body and drew an invisible circle encompassing the children alone. <—need to do now is to go to them. We will remain outside and make sure that no one who poses any danger to you can come in. Now go,> they instructed the snorunt with a waving motion of their still-detached hand. <Hurry, while they are still in there.>

A couple of the small, gray faces that had been staring up at Oth looked with uncertainty upon the claydol for a moment, but soon their owners were rushing to catch up with the rest of the snorunt, who were now running into the passageway toward the border-cavern. In nearly the instant that the last of them disappeared around the bend, <Get back out of here as fast as you can manage,> Oth instructed the rest of the party. The claydol was rushing forward away from the border-cavern even as they spoke, and all of the glalie immediately followed suit at the claydol’s command.

They put a fair amount of distance between themselves and the border-cavern, stopping at Oth’s signal at the point where the path first branched. There, they positioned themselves just within one of the tunnels leading out from the fork, simultaneously watching over the furthest point from Virc-Dho through which all traffic must pass and the tunnel back to the border-cavern. They waited there for a while, giving the guild members at the border a chance to deal with what had just run into their midst.

Solonn gazed out over the heads in front of him toward Virc-Dho. He hoped the children had gotten safely into the Security Guild’s figurative hands and were now being reunited with their families, or at least that they’d be reunited with them soon.

Then it finally, truly hit him that some of them might not have families to return to any longer, and he turned away involuntarily as another wave of heartsickness rolled over him.

Eventually, <It should be all right to proceed now. Zilag, are you ready?> Oth asked, at which Zilag nodded from just inside the entrance to the cavern ahead of them. There was a flash of light in the claydol’s eyes that signified their telepathic connection with Zdir being broken, followed almost immediately by another that signified a new link being forged with Zilag. <It is done,> Oth told Zilag. <We are now connected.>

Zilag found that confirmation unnecessary; he was sure he’d sensed something entering his perception but staying just out of reach. It was like a memory he couldn’t quite recall, but with one difference: he could tell that it most definitely wasn’t of his own mind.

Trying not to let that foreignness distract him too much, he instead opted to test the connection. <Can you hear this?> he asked.

<Technically no, but I am receiving your message.>

Zilag couldn’t help but nearly laugh, wondering if Oth had actually intended any joke there. <Guess it’s time for me to head out, then, huh?> he asked.

<Yes,> Oth responded.

<Okay,> Zilag acknowledged, but didn’t depart right away. He held the rest of the party in his gaze for a few moments more, seeing varying degrees of concern and unspoken well-wishes in the faces there, with the eyelight particularly unsteady and the brows drawn tightly together on the largest face among them. <Tell them goodbye for me,> Zilag said. <And tell them not to worry too much about me; I’ll take care of myself. You all just concentrate on taking care of yourselves, okay?>

Oth relayed the message, drawing acknowledging nods from the other party members. Satisfied as he could be that he was ready to part ways with them, Zilag then turned away and began making his way back toward the warren alone.

<There may well still be Security Guild members in the border-cavern when you arrive there,> Oth told him as he traveled, <even if the ones we saw going in earlier have gone further inside since the children joined them. Zdir believes that there may be guards posted at the entrance now and that they were the ones who were speaking with the guild members we saw.>

Zilag absorbed this with very little surprise; he’d been steeling himself as best as he could to deal with Security Guild members ever since Zdir had told him that they might take an interest in him. <So I should probably just expect there will be, then. But I shouldn’t act like I expected to find them there if there are.>

<Correct,> Oth responded.

<Okay, then… They’re probably gonna want to know what I’ve been up to out here, right?>

<Most assuredly. You are advised to tell them that you had gone out hunting.>

<Yeah, that’s what I’d planned to do,> Zilag said. He’d been rehearsing the lie in his head from time to time since the evening prior. He just hoped to all gods that if anyone had been questioning Hledas in his absence, she hadn’t told them anything that would clash with his story. <I’m gonna tell them I couldn’t find anything, though. I just don’t trust my stomach to keep quiet enough for them to believe me otherwise. Gods, I can’t wait to get some real food again…>

It wasn’t long before Zilag found himself approaching the barrier at the entrance; <All right, I’m here,> he sent back to Oth. It appeared there were indeed guards posted there; three glalie hovered before the barrier, and while none of them made a move to intercept him, their eyes followed him keenly as he drew nearer.

Hoping he looked sufficiently surprised to see them there, “Uh… what’s going on?” he asked as he came to a stop a couple of feet in front of them, wearing a perplexed frown.

None of the guards answered the question, at least not right away. “How long have you been out?” one of them asked, though not harshly. “And what have you been doing?”

Zilag had expected to be hit with questions upon his arrival, though the fact that he’d managed to get one in first did surprise him somewhat. “Too long,” he answered, half-sighing. “I was out hunting… or trying to, anyway. Went out late the night before last and found not a damn thing since. Had to sleep out there and everything.”

There was a moment of silence and a very brief look exchanged amongst the guards. “You’re lucky to have woken up,” another of the guards said seriously. “The steel creature and the psychic escaped while you were gone.”

Zilag’s eyes widened dramatically. “What? Oh gods, my family…” he said at once. “Are they all right? I need to get in there—”

He’d made a move toward the barrier as he’d spoken, trying to vaporize it as he did so, but the barrier remained fully intact, and the guards moved in unison to block him. “Your family is fine, I assure you,” the second guard said. “There have been no further attacks since the prisoners escaped.”

Zilag didn’t have to fabricate the relief in his expression. “Oh, thank the gods…” he murmured.

“Now, I’m sorry you weren’t successful in your hunt,” the first guard spoke up then, “but we’re going to have to ask that you don’t go out and try again on your own, at least not anytime soon, all right? It’s not safe for just anyone to travel alone right now. You’ll need to go with the next hunting party.”

“Okay,” Zilag said, nodding, “okay.” He looked questioningly at the barrier, hoping he’d be let in soon. He wasn’t altogether certain that the guards were buying his story, and every moment he spent with them made him ever so slightly less comfortable around them. He was somewhat grateful for his unease, though, and didn’t make any real effort to hide it at this point, hoping that any nervousness they noticed would be interpreted as an appropriate reaction to having just learned about the escape.

The barrier vanished, but before he could enter the warren, “I’m going to be going home with you, all right?” the first guard said. “Like I said, it’s not safe for just anyone to travel alone right now.”

Zilag nodded in acceptance, unsurprised and figuring he had no real choice in the matter anyway, especially given that the guard had decided on his destination for him. He only hoped that by “going home with you”, the guard simply meant that he’d be escorting Zilag back to his family’s place of residence and not staying with them for any length of time.

Zilag entered Virc-Dho, his escort following, the barrier immediately reforming behind them once they were past it. <I’m being escorted home,> he told Oth. <Looks like Zdir was right about them not wanting to leave me entirely alone. They haven’t acted blatantly suspicious of me yet, though—not that I imagine they would, of course. They’re just claiming concern for me, what with the escape and everything.>

<There does remain a chance that they genuinely do not suspect you,> Oth responded. <Still, remain cautious. Continue to do as you have been advised and you may yet avoid trouble.>

Zilag heard the guard behind him draw a rather deep breath and felt something inside him tense as if anticipating a strike, but the guard only spoke. “I’m afraid I have something to tell you that you’re not going to like hearing,” he said.

Zilag stopped, careful not to turn to face his escort too quickly, and gave him a troubled look. “Oh?”

The guard sighed. “You’re friends with a Mr. Solonn Zgil-Al, right?”

There was no use in denying it; as Zilag had been told, the authorities certainly knew who associated with those they didn’t trust, and the fact that the guard had asked such a question seemed to confirm it. Zilag nodded.

“Have you seen him recently?” the guard asked.

“Well, I saw him at the service,” Zilag said quietly, “but I haven’t seen him since then, no. Why do you ask? What’s going on?”

“Well, we think he might have been the one who freed the steel creature and the psychic. Now, I know you might not want to believe that, but there’s something you need to consider: if it was him, odds are he wasn’t doing it of his own accord. We think he’s under some kind of psychic control.”

Zilag cast his gaze to the icy floor, his brow furrowed, trying to look deep in thought. “This… this wouldn’t be the first time he’s run into trouble with something psychic,” he said, slipping a hint of dawning epiphany into his tone.

“No, it wouldn’t,” the guard said. “We do have reason to believe that the same thing that took him way back when is responsible for what’s going on now. They’ve even returned the children they stole, just like they brought him back.”

Zilag’s gaze shot back up to meet the guard’s, the light in his eyes brightening. “Really?”

“Just earlier today,” the guard confirmed.

“Oh, that’s good to hear…” Zilag said with a sigh of relief. He then turned back around and continued toward home. “At least something’s gone right lately…”

“Well, we don’t intend to let anything else go wrong if we can help it.” The guard’s tone suggested that he was trying to be lighthearted, but there was also something vaguely affronted-sounding in his voice, which sent a little wisp of worry through Zilag; had he said something he shouldn’t have? “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that Solonn’s whereabouts are currently unknown and that if you see him… be careful, all right? He’s probably not himself, and he might attack you. If you see him, you should probably knock him out and call out for help right away. If it turns out he’s not being controlled after all, I’m sure he’ll forgive you if he really is any kind of friend.”

“…Okay,” Zilag said.

Soon after, the two arrived at the Zir-Arda residence. “So this is it, huh?” the guard asked.

“Yeah,” Zilag answered.

“Okay, then. Stay safe, all right?” With those words, the guard backed away a short distance, but he kept his eyes on Zilag.

Figuring the guard wouldn’t leave until he went on in—if indeed he intended to leave at all—Zilag opened the entryway and passed through it, sealing it shut at once. Inside, he found Hledas holding a troubled and questioning gaze upon him, while Ryneika chased a somewhat irritated-looking Kavir around the main room. The young child broke off her pursuit almost immediately when she noticed her father had returned, and she ran up to him with a squeal of joy. Kavir smiled at Zilag, grateful to have been rescued from her sister’s pestering.

“We need to talk,” Hledas said almost inaudibly.

Zilag shot a look back at the entrance. He saw no light beyond it to indicate a glalie lingering immediately outside, but he figured the guard would know better than to be so obvious anyway. Not knowing for sure if his escort was still within hearing range of anything said in the main chamber, and not exactly wanting his children to be privy to the conversation, he merely gave a quick nod and made for the couple’s bedroom. Ryneika tried to follow him in; “No, no. Play with your sister,” Zilag told her, earning a groan from Kavir.

Once both Zilag and Hledas were in the bedroom, the latter moved to hover at the former’s side. “Did you succeed?” she asked right into his ear, still whispering as faintly she could manage while remaining audible.

“Yes,” Zilag said, keeping his voice just as low. While it was true that Jen was still brainwashed in Convergence, Zilag was still confident enough that the snorunt’s memories would be recovered and that the rest of the party would ultimately be able to go back and retrieve him. As such, he considered the rescue mission a success.

“Thank the gods,” Hledas said as she moved to face Zilag once more, “both for that and for your return.” She sat down. “The authorities came in while you were away,” she then said. “They asked questions, Zilag. They asked where you were and if either of us had seen Solonn lately.”

Zilag swallowed, turning to look her in the eye. “Well… what did you tell them?”

“That you were just out hunting and that the last we saw of Solonn was at the service.”

The light in Zilag’s eyes brightened, and he had to bite back a miniature peal of laughter in the relief he felt. Grinning, he moved forward to press his forehead against Hledas’s. “Oh, thank the gods you said that…” he breathed happily.

“Well, what did you think I would’ve said?” Hledas responded as Zilag drifted back once more. “I already could’ve lost you as it was. Do you really think I’d have done anything that could’ve even remotely risked getting you thrown in a cell if you did make it back?” she asked, looking somewhat hurt.

Zilag’s smile faded a bit. “No… no, of course I don’t.” He drew close to her again, his eyes closing, letting his forehead rest against hers once more. “Thanks for taking care of things. I appreciate it,” he said sincerely.

To Oth, he then said, <I’m back home. That guard who was following me may or may not be hanging around outside, but at least he’s not in here with us. I think he might actually trust me—don’t worry, though; I don’t intend to get careless. And Hledas did get questioned, but her story matches up with mine—and… well, I’m not gonna get careless with her, either. I’ve decided not to tell her about our little connection here.> It had occurred to him that Hledas might stop trusting him or go to the authorities with his well-being in mind if she found out that he’d come home with a psychic link he hadn’t had before.

<That seems like a prudent course of action,> Oth said. <From what I heard of the conversation that you two held with Solonn, she seemed… somewhat more inclined toward believing that I was responsible for the recent tragedies.>

<Yeah…> Zilag said, with a touch of vicarious guilt in his mindvoice and a further shrinking of his smile. But he also felt something of an urge to defend Hledas in that moment. <But again, she’s already saved my hide once, so…>

<She most assuredly has,> Oth concurred. <It seems as though you really can take care of yourselves.>

A sense of pride washed over Zilag, and his smile widened once more. <It does, doesn’t it?> he said. Now that there was at least a little more hope that he and his family would be able to carry on without any real harassment from the authorities, he felt much more confident in such claims.

* * *

<The Security Guild appears to have shifted its focus from maintaining the silence of the witnesses to keeping an eye out for potential threats,> Oth said to the small crowd of glalie gathered before them within the deep chambers that were Grosh’s home. After taking some time to hunt and feed, the party had decided that this would be their refuge, at least for the time being. They’d been there for roughly half a day by this point. <Zilag and Hledas, as well as friends of the latter, have seen known witnesses to the attack going unescorted and have seen known guild members patrolling the warren, and I am told that guards are indeed now posted at the entrance at all times.>

“I’d figured as much,” Zdir said in the hushed tones that had become the norm for the group, nodding. “At least as far as the shifted focus is concerned, anyway. Now that his prisoners have escaped and Hagen’s been forced to let the people find out as much—to let them recognize that they need to be on the lookout for trouble from other glalie, even if they’re being led to believe that said glalie are merely illusions concealing something else—he’s undoubtedly well beyond the point of feeling like he needs to keep people believing that they’re not in any danger.”

“But Zilag and his family still don’t know for certain whether or not they’re being watched, do they?” Solonn asked.

<I am afraid not,> Oth answered. <Zilag wishes to assure you that both he and Hledas continue to do their best to keep the possibility of the guild monitoring them in mind at all times, however.>

“Hm…” was Solonn’s only reply to that, sounding less than fully assured. He hadn’t really expected either of them to be careless in dealing with the guild, but the notion of them possibly being watched like that still gave him a degree of gnawing worry and a vicarious sense of indignation.

<He also has mentioned that there are rumors of the Security Guild intending to increase its numbers,> Oth then said. <There has been no official word from the guild on the subject, however. It may only be wishful thinking on the part of the public.>

“Hopefully that rumor will prove to be true. I’ll admit right now that I don’t exactly have the utmost faith in the guild’s current ability to defend the warren. At the very least, a small pack of guards at the entrance isn’t going to keep the Sinaji out if they show up in even a third of the numbers I suspect them to have,” Zdir said grimly.

“Sounds like they’d do best to just do away with the Security Guild,” Narzen mused aloud.

That immediately earned him a couple of bemused and alarmed looks.

“What I mean is, they should probably just train everybody to fight like they do,” he clarified. “Just make everyone one of them, basically. From the way you’re talking,” he said with a glance at Zdir, “it sounds like they’re gonna need practically the entire damn warren to stand a chance against the Sinaji.”

“I don’t imagine that’s literally the case,” Zdir said, “but I do agree that making sure that as many people can defend themselves as possible is something that should happen, yes. And that, incidentally, includes all of us, especially since we still have more than just the Sinaji to be concerned with as long as we remain here.”

“Which is unfortunate,” Ronal said. “I for one would like to have the guild on our side, especially with their numbers bolstered. I’d prefer to take the fight to the Sinaji rather than let them make another move against the warren.”

“Under those circumstances, that might well have become an option,” Zdir said. “As it is, though, we’re still fugitives and accomplices thereof in the guild’s eyes. We may be able to seek out allies once we can be teleported from this place—then, perhaps, we can deal with the Sinaji. For now, however, I don’t imagine that most of us are ready to face more than a stray exile or a guild member or two. You all need to be made ready. You need to be trained to fight for your lives. We need to make damn sure that we’re all truly prepared to face whatever lies ahead of us.”

Pale eyes turned Solonn’s way, and he thought he detected a hint of weariness about them as though their owner were dealing with a tiresome child.

“Zdir… what if they hadn’t been Sinaji?”

No response, or at least none spoken. Her expression became harder to read.

“What then?” Solonn’s voice lowered of its own accord. “What would we have done?”

A pause. Then, “They could have joined with us if Oth had found them inclined and able to do so. If not…”

The lines of Solonn’s face sharpened further, his eyes narrowing. Something turned to lead inside of him.

“If not,” she resumed, but then sighed. “I think you already know the answer, whatever you feel about it—and for what it’s worth, no, Solonn, I don’t like it, either. I would hope that any Virc who found their way to us in the future would prove to be no liability, but if not…”

She let it hang. Maybe it was the fact that she couldn’t seem to bring herself to speak of it that stopped him from going off on her any further; maybe it made it easier for him to believe that she really did hate it as much as he did, or at least close enough to suit him.

He turned away, closing his eyes against the orange glow of the beams that were vaporizing the lifeless intruders in the adjacent chamber, wishing he could block out the accompanying sound and taste on the air likewise.

* * *

The days were starting to shorten again. The forest behind was beginning to change its colors, and the river far below was hosting a different set of creatures than before.

To the large, silver figure coiled on the cliff, all of the changes to his surroundings served as reminders of one constant that had persisted since he’d come to southern Mordial. All this time, he’d waited for the burst of golden light that would bring news of what had become of his family. Months later, that light still hadn’t come.

Grosh had feared for Solonn and Jen from the start, but he’d tried to maintain some measure of faith, some hope that the search party had a chance in hell despite Zdir’s estimation that their enemies outnumbered them several to one. He’d known they’d be operating blind for the most part, scouring a network of tunnels that Grosh knew from personal experience was vast and sometimes confusing. Of course it was going to take a while for the party to return, even if things worked out all right in the end.

But even given that, Grosh hadn’t expected for this much time to pass without seeing any of them again. And he’d by no means forgotten what he’d seen back in the Virc temple. Things could have all too easily gone horribly wrong, and he had no way of knowing for sure if they had.

He hated not knowing. He hated being kept across the sea while God only knew what was happening to the last people in the world who meant anything to him. He’d never stopped wishing he could’ve gone with them. But with no small effort, and despite constantly wondering whether or not he was really making the best choice, he’d stayed in roughly the same area where they’d left him. He didn’t want to worry them with his absence should they return.

But the last drops of belief that they still could were starting to dry up. Now his waking thoughts were nearly as certain that something terrible had befallen them as his dreams had been during the past few months. His restlessness had grown as his faith had waned, and so had his hatred of the ones who’d murdered Azvida and stolen one of her sons.

That they could have killed the other—and by now, Grosh couldn’t help but fear, they surely had—sickened him to his core. The notion that Azvida’s dying wish might have been shot down tormented him, and there came a point when he just couldn’t wait around with that torment any longer. He had to act. Maybe it was too late to bring Solonn and Jen back to safety, but perhaps, somehow, he could make the ones responsible answer for what they’d done.

But despite the fact that his agitation was rising by the minute, threatening to fill his mind with haze, he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He couldn’t even get back to Virc-Dho without help, let alone take on what might amount to a miniature nation of glalie and snorunt.

Rising, he turned his back on the river and entered the forest, silently and occasionally not-so-silently cursing the noise he made as he twisted and crawled among the trees. He could hear local pokémon fleeing as he made his way through their territory, no more keen on interacting with the massive metal serpent than they’d been when he’d simply hung around on the outskirts of the forest. Just stopping someone long enough to hear him out about his need for transportation and aid against his enemies was going to be a challenge.

After some time, with no real luck in flagging down anyone who might be able to help him thus far, he saw the forest thinning before him. Not far ahead, a dilapidated highway stretched across his path. He headed toward it, sweeping a glance from left to right over its cracked, faded surface and the weeds sprouting up through its fissures. Where the road led, Grosh couldn’t tell; it extended all the way to the horizon in both directions with no clear destinations in sight.

Before he had any chance to decide whether or not he wanted to try following the road, a piqued instinct took hold of his attention. An elemental telltale was setting off a familiar warning that fanned out across his nerves in an instant, and it was accompanied by a light rumbling in the ground whose source was several yards off in front of him and approaching rather quickly.

Someone was coming, someone who might be useful to his cause… or who might already be aware of his presence, unhappy about it, and intent on driving him off the hard way. Grosh backed off a bit, his eyes trained on the disturbance and following it as it moved despite being unable to actually see its cause. The end of his tail rose off the ground, shining even brighter than usual as he held an iron tail attack at the ready.

Once they were just a couple of feet away from him, whoever was approaching from underground decided to make a proper entrance. The soil exploded upward, and three fuzzy, brown heads popped out into the open air, blinking and twitching their noses under the sunlight. Almost immediately afterward, a section of the street behind the newly surfaced creature burst apart, scattering chunks of asphalt as another dugtrio emerged.

“Oh, so that’s what that was!” said the second of them.

“Certainly wasn’t what I was expecting,” said the first.

“Or, well, not the silveriness, at least. That I wasn’t expecting. But I knew he’d be big.”

“Oh, same here, same here.”

“But he’s not big; he’s huge!”

“I’ll say.”

“Could probably snap one of us up in two bites, I’ll bet.”

“In one bite, even!”

Grosh had no such intentions—he’d even decided against bringing the iron tail down on them, letting the steel-type energy dissipate. But as the two rattled on, he found himself tempted to speak a little less kindly to them than he might’ve otherwise, his spiked segments twisting in impatience and a touch of lingering unease at the presence of the two ground-types.

He held down the outburst trying to shove its way out of his mouth, not wanting to scare them away. Instead, he merely cleared his throat to try and get the two dugtrio’s attention, though that still resulted in a deep, grating rumble that could easily be misinterpreted as a growl.

Thankfully, the noise didn’t register as anything threatening to the dugtrio; all twelve of their eyes locked onto his in unison, and neither of the dugtrio looked terribly worried despite having discussed the possibility of being eaten by the steelix mere moments ago.

“Hm?” the first of them said, cocking one of her heads. “Something you’re wanting from us?”

Grosh opened his mouth, but then: “Now come on, surely he can tell we don’t have anything on us,” the other dugtrio countered, his rightmost head turning to face the first dugtrio as he spoke, his other two faces still turned up toward Grosh. “Have you ever tried digging and carrying things at the same time? It’s not easy! I’ll bet Silvery here understands what I’m talking about; just look at him. Looks like a burrower himself, doesn’t he? Like a great big worm, don’t y—”

“My family and I need help,” Grosh cut in, his voice easily overpowering those of the dugtrio, who quickly fell silent at his interruption. “I’m wondering if you know anyone who can get me to our enemies and help me fight them.” He didn’t imagine they’d be much help themselves—however swift they were, he doubted they could last long against a horde of well-trained ice-types. He was prepared to dissuade them if they offered to join the fight themselves.

“Oh. You’ll want Valdrey, then,” the second dugtrio said.

“Oh yes, she’d be absolutely elated to help you out. Poor dear’s probably not seen a really good fight in years,” said the first dugtrio. “And she’s got friends all over; perhaps some of them’d be willing to pitch in, too.”

Grosh’s eyes widened and his head rose a bit further, but he made an effort to avoid getting too optimistic too soon. The dugtrio’s response was promising, but there was no way of knowing if this Valdrey person would really be that enthusiastic about joining his cause. Not yet, at least. There also wasn’t any way to know if she’d have enough friends—if indeed the dugtrio were right about them even being Valdrey’s friends—to stand any sort of chance against the exiles, even if every last one of them joined the cause. His search for aid wasn’t guaranteed to end with this lead.

“Where is she?” he asked before the dugtrio could get into another conversation with each other.

Both of the dugtrio jerked one or more of their heads back and to their right, toward the old highway. “That way,” they said in near unison.

“Just follow that path to Wisteria,” said the first dugtrio. “You’ll know it when you see it; humans used to live there.”

“Oh, now don’t assume Silvery knows what humans were,” said the second. “Doesn’t seem to be from around here; who knows what he has and hasn’t seen.”

“No, I’m perfectly aware of what humans were,” Grosh assured them. “Thank you both kindly for your help,” he added, then made his way around and past the two dugtrio and set off down the road.

“Don’t mention it!” the first of them called out to the departing steelix.

In time, stone walls started cropping up to either side as Grosh continued toward Wisteria. They soon rose above his line of sight. Along with the way the road now curved, this prevented him from being able to see where it was actually taking him.

Grosh hoped the dugtrio hadn’t sent him off in some useless direction—or worse, pointed him toward trouble. It was only now, with the faint glimmer of hope they’d given him clearing some of the haze from his mind, that it occurred to him that they might’ve been feigning trust him in order to guide him into a trap.

He started berating himself silently for trusting them so readily when no one else in Mordial had been friendly toward him up to that point, but caught himself short. Come on now, don’t beat yourself up over it too much, he told himself. This might still work out. And you had to give it a try. You know you did.

The steelix carried on in the direction he’d been shown, trying to focus on the name of the person he was seeking in case he needed to ask someone else for an audience with her. Eventually the stone walls shrunk back into the ground, and a cluster of buildings came into view soon after.

It was then that Grosh realized he’d left the dugtrio’s company before they could tell him just where in Wisteria he was supposed to go.

Grumbling in annoyance at himself, Grosh slithered along the downward slope toward the city below. Now he had more asking around to do—he could only hope it would go better than it had back in the forest.

Inauspiciously, the first few pokémon that caught his eye darted away as soon as they were sure he’d noticed them. Others, remaining unseen altogether, could be heard scuttling away from him, evading him among largely empty and decrepit shops and houses and down slowly darkening alleyways whenever he tried to approach them.

At some point, he thought he heard a whole crowd of people gathered and chatting somewhere neither too near nor too far. Before much longer, he pinpointed the source of the noise: there was a large, circular building up ahead, and as he got closer to it he could see a faded sign. He couldn’t read the words on it, but he recognized the IPL’s poké ball logo in its center from his time as a trainer’s pokémon. He was looking at an old gym, he reckoned.

Grosh figured that if there really were as many people hanging around in there as it sounded like, then at least someone among them might hear what he had to say before they could get a chance to flee. Granted, they were sure to know he was headed their way before he got there, but he still hoped that being all cooped up in a large building would impede their escape long enough for him to make someone hear him out.

As he approached the gym, trying to move as quietly as he could, he saw a sawsbuck emerge from it, using his red-leaf-covered antlers to push his way out through the large double doors at the building’s arched entrance. The moment the sawsbuck raised his head once more, his eyes met Grosh’s across the remaining distance between them, and he immediately turned tail and went right back in through those doors.

“Damn it!” Grosh spat, not quite under his breath. Now they’d have even more of a warning and more motivation to get the hell out of there.

Nonetheless, he decided against giving up. It could still work, he tried to believe as he continued onward. Hell, maybe this Valdrey’s in there herself. She doesn’t sound like the type who’ll run—not if those two were right about her, anyway…

Just as Grosh was about to reach the doors, they opened again. This time, three pokémon stepped out into the parking lot. There was the sawsbuck from earlier, accompanied by a rapidash and a golden-armored centaur pokémon that Grosh didn’t recognize: an aurrade.

Both the rapidash and the aurrade awakened little threads of elemental unease in Grosh, and the look on the former’s face suggested that the feeling was mutual between him and the steelix. The aurrade’s expression was a little harder to read; there were hinged plates of her armor covering most of her face, leaving only her eyes visible.

“Hi,” she spoke up crisply, her voice resonating a bit oddly from within her armor. She clasped her hands in front of her waist. “Care to share what brings you to these parts?”

There was a faint sense of relief at the fact that these three had willingly approached him, but Grosh remained wary. They also seemed well-trained, much moreso than the dugtrio had, and he wasn’t so sure he could take them all on if they decided they didn’t like what he had to say.

“I’m looking for someone named Valdrey,” he responded.

“Well, mission accomplished,” the aurrade said; Grosh saw the dark gray skin around her eyes crinkle in a way that made him wonder if she were smiling behind those faceplates. “Any particular reason you were looking for me?”

“I need help,” Grosh said. “Me and my son, and his brother, and their whole nation. They’ve got enemies, horrible ones. They…” He suddenly felt like a stone was lodged in his throat. “They took the love of my life from me,” he said, his gaze lowered. “They’ve taken many lives. And I don’t doubt for a second that they’ll take more.”

Valdrey cocked her head slightly. She cast a quick glance to each of the pokémon at her sides; both of them looked somewhat less apprehensive toward the situation than they had before, but neither’s expression had softened completely.

“Sounds like they need to be taught a lesson,” she said as she looked up at Grosh once more and folded her arms across her chest. Her tone was notably softer, more sober than before.

“Yes,” Grosh said, nodding. “But I can’t do it alone. I can’t even get back to them on my own—there’s an ocean and God knows how much distance in the way. Please… if there’s anything you or anyone you know can do to help…”

Valdrey stepped forward, then made her way around the sawsbuck to the doors and pushed one of them open. “Come on in,” she said. “Let’s see what we can do for you.”

A solid body was smashed against a stone wall. One of its horns snapped clean off, falling to the floor and rolling a short distance away. Ice cracked audibly, bits of it flying everywhere.

With the impact still ringing faintly in Solonn’s bones, he withdrew his horn from the side of his attacker’s head. He pulled back, panting, staring down at the broken form before him.

In the next moment, his victim dissipated into thin air.

“Well done,” Zdir said from nearby. “And that goes for you, too, as always.”

The other one she was speaking to was Oth. The claydol had been puppeteering the “glalie” against whom, or rather which, Solonn had been training, just as they’d been doing for him and the other fugitives in the months since Oth had volunteered the idea.

The ice dummies were conceived to reduce the amount of injury and need for recovery for the fugitives during their training, though they still included some sparring against one another to increase their elemental power. Though the glalie could manipulate the dummies themselves, Oth’s telekinesis was significantly stronger. It quickly proved better suited to making the artificial glalie move with the same speed and force as the real thing.

Oth was unquestionably grateful to be able to help out in this way. Solonn was glad for them, too, and not only because of their usefulness. Throughout all this time, the claydol still hadn’t regained the ability to teleport; being able to do another sort of good in the meantime was helping Oth finally stop blaming themself for that fact.

“I think that’ll do for now,” Zdir then said. “Back to the chasm, everyone.”

While Grosh had abandoned the place where he’d been waiting, the Virc fugitives and the claydol among them had stayed put for the most part, only venturing out of Grosh’s home to hunt.

They descended into the chasm a couple at a time as usual. Shortly after they’d all made it down, <I am receiving a report from Zilag,> Oth announced, at which everyone gathered around them, awaiting whatever news Oth had to relay this time.

Thus far, the news had largely been good. Zilag’s reports from Virc-Dho told that the Sinaji had stayed out of Virc territory since the initial attack. The Security Guild had indeed swelled their ranks, adding to the likelihood that the Virc would be sufficiently defended in the event of another strike. And while neither Zilag nor Hledas were ready to assume the guild no longer monitored them, the authorities had avoided being overbearing about it.

After a few minutes, <A hunting party had an encounter with two exiles yesterday,> Oth told the others. <All of the Virc survived. Beyond that, there has been no trouble among the Virc.>

“That’s good to hear,” Zdir said.

“Yeah,” Narzen said. “Sounds like two fewer problems for us.”

The fugitives had dealt with some of the Sinaji themselves during their time up in Shoal Cave. They’d had a couple of run-ins with them during hunting excursions, which had left a couple among their number with some new scars and had partially depleted their already short supply of dried and frozen revival herbs.

On top of that, it had become clear that the chasm wasn’t as impervious to discovery as they’d hoped. A pair of Sinaji hunters, separated from the rest of their party and lost after a skirmish with a gang of walrein, had stumbled upon the hole in the ground and opted to descend into it. They’d been struck down almost as soon as they’d appeared, and once they’d been identified as Sinaji, their fate had been sealed.

Apart from Sinaji, the fugitives had neither encountered nor been visited by anyone. There’d been no run-ins with the Virc, guild members or otherwise, and no one from outside Shoal Cave had shown up, either. Questions of whether or not they could ever expect help from Convergence, from the ones who might still be holding one of the Sinaji in their custody, had come up more than once, but by this point no one really expected them to pitch in—assuming, of course, that they hadn’t already tried and failed.

Following the report from Zilag, the evening proceeded just as most evenings had since taking refuge in the chasm. The five glalie conjured ice for themselves and began conversing in lowered voices among themselves and with the claydol. At some point, “All right, let’s resume,” Zdir said. Everyone who wasn’t already hovering rose and gathered behind her to return to the cavern above for some more training.

She’d barely begun to generate the ice platform for them to ride on when she immediately dissipated it. No one questioned her actions. They’d all heard the faint voices coming from outside just as she had.

The tension in the chamber where the fugitives now warily and watchfully huddled together seemed to harden the air, making it difficult to breathe. Solonn stared into the adjacent room, keeping himself as still as he could manage, his heart pounding. Its pace only quickened at the sound of ice slithering down the walls of the chasm.

As every other glalie alongside him did likewise, he put a nhaza on standby, hoping to the gods that if it came down to his shot saving their lives, it would succeed. The rigorous training Zdir had put everyone through in the past several months was intended, among other purposes, to put the advantages of the elemental weapon into their figurative hands. They’d be likelier to withstand any attackers’ nhaza, and their own would be likelier to work. But since both the Sinaji and the Security Guild were well-trained, too, there was always the lingering doubt that it had been enough.

The fugitives waited for their uninvited guests to descend further, and Solonn disliked the suspense. He accepted it all the same, understanding well why they waited. It was better to get a clear line of sight before attempting to strike. Better to avoid knocking out whomever was generating the ice platform, in which case its riders could come crashing down before their innocence and what should be done with them could be determined. The intruders would be allowed to come down far enough to make getting back out—and taking knowledge of the fugitives’ location with them—more difficult.

A silver of deep blue light framing the lower halves of gray-and-white bodies lowered into view. The eyes watching it maintained their color, the turret-hands pointed toward the approaching intruders holding their fire. No sense in striking at shielded targets.

And then there the intruders were. Just a few feet away, three glalie in a triangular formation and a fourth actually sitting atop their heads were staring with wide eyes behind protect auras that were due to fade at any moment.

<We must subject you to a psychic scan to verify your claims,> they said.

“What?” another of the intruders responded, sounding more than a little alarmed at that prospect.

But, “Fine, fine!” the one who was being carried said, nodding rather frantically, raising an unpleasant noise as the armor covering her belly scraped against that of the glalie beneath her. Then, as a few seconds passed with apparently nothing happening, “Are they done yet?”

“No,” Zdir said.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” the intruder who’d spoken first said, then winced as if she feared she might be pushing it. A second later, the intruders’ protect shields fell.

“That,” Zdir responded, at which Oth drifted forward. The rest of the fugitives kept staring at the intruders, ready to strike again at any moment.

Oth rose and stopped in front of the glalie who was still perched atop her party members’ heads, and said glalie made a valiant but not entirely successful attempt to conceal her unease at Oth’s presence. Solonn narrowed his eyes at her, hoping her discomfort wouldn’t lead her to try and attack the claydol.

Meanwhile a faint and familiar discomfort of his own reared its head, but it was fleeting. The scan was voluntary this time, after all, and the awareness that he still might have to strike in order to save Oth at any moment was taking up too much of his mind to allow much else to linger there.

Eventually, <Our visitors are Evane La-Zyar—> Oth pointed toward the glalie whom they’d just scanned. <—Viraya La-Zyar, Moriel La-Virj, and Alij Van-Zaria.> They swept a hand from left to right over the other three glalie as they named them off. <Evane intends no harm to any of us, and from her knowledge of the others, it appears unlikely that any of them do, either. They are all deserters. They have all fled from Sinaji territory, and all of them have expressed very strong disinterest in re-affiliating with them.>

Evane watched Oth as they moved backward away from her, then turned her gaze toward Zdir. “…Can I please come down from here?” she asked tentatively. “This is really rather awkward.”

The set of Zdir’s brows suggested that she was somewhat deep in thought, but nonetheless she spared a nod for Evane. Acknowledging this, Evane extended a sheet of ice downward between Moriel and Viraya’s heads, descending the ramp she’d just made toward the stone floor and then making it vanish in a cloud of vapor.

“You can come forward as well,” Zdir told the others, who did so a bit hesitantly.

“Will we need to have a scan, too?” Alij asked.

“Possibly,” Zdir said, “but probably not. For now, I’d like for you to tell me what finally convinced you to leave the Sinaji.”

“There’s something wrong with their leader,” Moriel said. Narzen made a derisive noise at her response; she ignored him. “He hasn’t been acting like himself. Not since they were invaded. Some enemies of theirs got in and out without anyone even noticing, and ever since then… I swear, the leader’s gone crazy. He’s been babbling something about ‘repayment for the blood of the Rannia’, whatever that means.”

“And something about the honor of the ‘Vanished Ones’. Maybe they’re the same thing,” Evane supposed out loud.

“Maybe,” Moriel said. ”All I know is that he didn’t even sound like himself anymore, and neither did the ones closest to him. And there near the end, before we got away, they were threatening us, threatening our lives. And they made good on it with some of us.”

“We’re not the first to try and get away from them,” Viraya said morosely. “Just the first to survive trying.”

No one said anything for a few moments after that. Then, “Understandable that you’d want to get away from such a climate,” Ronal said. “But I do find it troubling that knowing these people were involved in murders and kidnappings wasn’t enough to convince you that you should want nothing more to do with them.”

All of the apparent defectors turned toward him with what looked like genuine shock. “What… When the hell was this going on?” Moriel demanded.

“Right before that invasion you mentioned. Are you telling us you honestly weren’t privy to these doings?” Zdir asked.

“We had no idea,” Alij said hollowly.

“None whatsoever,” Moriel said. “You can have the psychic look in our heads again if you don’t believe us.”

“Sanaika and his gang have had a bad reputation in Virc-Dho for a long time,” Narzen said. “Surely you knew what kind of people you were involved with from the start.”

“Whatever reputation they had down there is news to us,” Evane said. “We haven’t lived in Virc-Dho since we were children. Not since the humans took us.”

“So that’s what became of you,” Zdir mused aloud.

“You knew they’d gone missing?” Solonn asked. But of course she’d had the means to know such things, he realized just as quickly. The Security Guild, and by extension the Council, had found out when he’d been taken. The same was probably true of all abductions.

“Yes. And I know the names of Virc-Dho’s exiles. None of theirs are among them. So,” Zdir said to the deserters, “I suppose when you finally got back here, you encountered Sanaika’s people first?”

“Yes,” Evane said. “A clefable brought us here—teleported us to just outside these caverns, under the sun. The Sinaji told us that Virc-Dho had become corrupt. That their leaders had been overthrown and anyone who acted against them was being attacked and driven out. There was a lot of fighting going on up in these caverns when we arrived, and the Sinaji told us we’d only be safe with them. Since no one else seemed to win when they took the Sinaji on, we believed them.”

“They trained us,” Moriel said. “Trained us in case the Virc showed up and we had to defend our new nation against them. We made them regret it.” She smiled, but there was something rueful in it. “We had to use every last trick they taught us, plus spring a few surprises we picked up on the outside. It was just barely enough… well, mostly enough.” The light in her eyes dimmed considerably. “Wasn’t enough for Kanjara, but…”

“Well,” Zdir said at length. “We are willing to provide sanctuary to you if you’re willing to accept it.”

“Yes, yes of course,” Moriel said; the other three nodded in agreement. “Thank you.”

“Now, considering the training the four of you have undergone, we’d also appreciate it if you were to aid us in any future confrontations with the Sinaji,” Zdir told them.

“Of course,” Moriel repeated. She lowered her head slightly, averting her gaze. “It’s… the least we could do.” She shook her head and sighed. “I regret ever having anything to do with them.”

“We all do,” Viraya said. “I’d definitely have liked to have given them more of a… parting gift, but… well, there were only five of us against nearly three dozen of them.”

“Three dozen of them and some unseen mind-controller,” Narzen said.

“I suspected as much,” Evane said, and she sounded distinctly uneasy. Her eyes shifted toward Oth. “It would explain why some of them have been acting so strangely.”

“The fact that we know next to nothing about their psychic—or whatever they are—is still a strike against us,” Zdir said. “But the numbers of the Sinaji… that’s welcome news. I’d allowed for the possibility that there could be thrice the number you’ve reported.”

“It’s a good thing there weren’t. We wouldn’t have had a chance if…”

Alij’s voice faltered, a look of vaguely troubled confusion on his face as, from above, a strange, continuous grinding sound came rumbling through the stone overhead. Solonn, Oth, and Zdir, meanwhile, looked notably less perplexed.

Eyes wide, Solonn shot a look at Zdir, feeling a thrill of hope surge through him. “Gods, that sounds like…” He couldn’t quite dare to finish the sentence. “Is it… could it be possible?”

<Conceivably. Perhaps he found a way to return somewhere in Mordial,> Oth said.

“What’s going on?” Evane asked, sounding concerned.

Solonn stared up toward the wonderful, presently invisible possibility that had just reared its head, hearing the sound slowly grow fainter as its source kept moving onward. He’s not coming down here, he reckoned, all but certain at this point that yes, he was hearing exactly what he’d hoped he was hearing. He didn’t doubt that they’d be able to track the source of the sound by its sheer loudness and catch up with it easily if it came to that, but he wanted to know if he was right about what it was, and he didn’t want to wait. ”We’ve got to go check it out,” he said.

“Agreed. Come on,” Zdir said with a dip of her head toward Solonn, then led him into the chasm leading upwards. Solonn promptly generated the platform that would lift them out, his eyes blazing and his heart racing as he willed it to ascend as fast as it could.

Please let it be him, please let it be him, please…

The two of them reached the top, and the sight that greeted them halted Solonn’s thought processes at once.

There was Grosh… and there was a small, multispecies army alongside him.

For a moment, Solonn could do nothing but gawk at the sight. Then, “Father!” he greeted him.

The steelix turned his head immediately, as did most of those who’d arrived with him. His face lit up like the sun. “Oh my God, you’re all right!”

The pokémon accompanying him parted as he turned and made for his son as fast as he could. Solonn had begun rushing toward him in nearly the same instant and soon reached him. He buried his face against the steelix’s chest, shaking with joy and relief, and as Grosh gently brought his coils around him in an embrace, he felt tears fall upon his head from above.

“Father… how did you get here?” Solonn asked.

“That’s how,” Grosh answered, nodding toward a lanky, red-furred biped with a long, skull-like face and a black mane. “Quiul here was kind enough to help round up these people for us and bring us here.”

Solonn met the gaze of the mercirance Grosh had pointed out. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said sincerely, the light in his eyes wavering. He’d had legitimate reason to wonder if he’d ever see Grosh again, and now here the steelix was. And Solonn recognized that maybe now, he could also be reunited with other loved ones…

“Oh, it was nothing,” Quiul responded with as much of a warm smile as her face could manage.

“I do hope one of you will consent to a psychic scan,” Zdir spoke up. Solonn looked up in initial disbelief… but then he followed her line of sight. There was a pack of unfamiliar glalie there. None of them looked particularly hostile, but that didn’t mean anything.

“I… what?” one of them responded.

“We’ve been under threat of attack from not only our own kind but collaborators of an unknown kind for months now,” Zdir said.

“Those guys are from Sinnoh,” the aurrade who stood next to Quiul said. “They’re here for the same reason we are: to make your enemies wish they were never born.”

“Valdrey’s telling the truth,” Grosh said. “She and Quiul spent most of the past couple of days getting these people together. I was with them the entire time.”

“I don’t personally suspect them,” Zdir said, “or you. But it would be irresponsible of me to not seek confirmation.”

“That’s fine,” said another of the newly-arrived glalie, drifting forward a bit. “I’ll volunteer.”

“Very well,” Zdir said. She turned an expectant look toward Solonn, who followed her back to the hole in the floor and descended with her.

“So what’s the situation?” Narzen asked them once they reached the bottom.

“We may have just received reinforcements,” Zdir answered him, “as well as access to teleportation and a safer place to stay.”

“Ha, excellent!” Narzen responded. Several of the others mirrored his enthusiasm in some way, particularly among the defectors.

“So it would appear,” Zdir said. “But we do need to have one of them scanned first, just to be certain of what we’re dealing with.”

Wordlessly, Oth moved forward, accompanying Zdir and Solonn as they returned to the cavern above. Zdir indicated the glalie who’d offered himself up for scanning, and the claydol went to work at once. <This is Roskharha Nharitas,> they eventually reported. <He is not of this region, nor has he ever been here before, and the same is true of the rest of the glalie with him. They are soldiers of the Hirashka people.

<These are allies,> they said, and there was distinct hope and wonder in the tone of their mindvoice. <All of these people—> They indicated the entire crowd of various pokémon gathered there. <—are here to try and deal with the Sinaji.>

Zdir looked back toward Valdrey and Quiul. “We’ll aid you in your endeavor,” she told the two of them. “We and our new associates. They used to be involved with the enemy, and they’ve already yielded useful information about them. They may have more to offer us all.”

Valdrey tilted her head back, making a faint, intrigued-sounding noise. “Sounds like your people and mine could do with a good chat.”

“Yes, we could,” Grosh agreed. “I’d like to know how you’ve all been holding up these past few months.” He cast a look down toward Solonn as he said this, one that told that he hoped for the best.

For Jen too, no doubt. Solonn tried to put on a face that suggested good news on that front—they had, after all, successfully delivered him from the Sinaji, and as far as anyone was aware, he was still somewhere very safe. But he didn’t imagine Grosh would be happy about Jen being left behind, and he suspected the steelix was hoping to see him tonight.

It’s all right, Father. We might still bring him back very soon. With a teleporter available, there was a chance they could retrieve Jen in a matter of hours—though not as much of a chance as he’d have preferred.

Valdrey swept a glance over the room. “This doesn’t seem like the best place for that, though. Mind coming back to my place? It’s safe and spacious.”

“That sounds fine,” Zdir said.

<I will go inform the others,> Oth said, at which Zdir nodded in assent. The claydol drifted down into the chasm, and soon after they re-emerged, glalie began filing up to join the pokémon gathered above a few at a time.

Once they were all up, “All right now, gather together, everyone,” Valdrey instructed them. When it looked as though everyone had, “Are we all ready to go?” Valdrey asked, at which everyone gave some form of confirmation that they were. “All right then, let’s go!” And with those words and a burst of light, the small crowd vanished from Shoal Cave.

Bardothren: Glad to hear it! What's happening, I think, is that the story's kind of growing up before your eyes, in a sense. This was, after all, written over the course of a decade, with very large gaps in productivity here and there--four years between chapters, in one case. I'm not the same person I was in my early 20s. I guess it stands to reason that my writing's gone through its own changes over the years.

The fugitives and their new allies all reappeared under a night sky, but there was a degree of harsh, artificial light shining upon them from nearby. Solonn initially winced, but soon he’d adjusted enough to take in his new surroundings… insofar as he could. He was partially surrounded by other pokémon, some of whom were taller than he was.

But he didn’t have to see much before he realized that he recognized this place. This was the Wisteria gym in Mordial. He’d been here before, back when he was traveling the world to spread word of the Convergence project. The gym had been lit by sunlight back then rather than by the few of its lights that still functioned, and there’d been humans dotting the bleachers, watching as the gym leader’s pokémon raced each other for fun on the track that ran around the actual battle platform.

“Welcome to Wisteria,” Valdrey said as the rather tightly packed crowd began dispersing a bit, the eyes of some of the pokémon sweeping the alien environment in curiosity or wonder or mild wariness. She stepped out in front of Zdir. “This is my home, and for as long as you have need of it, it can be your home, too.”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Zdir said. She settled herself at the edge of the racetrack, and the rest of the Virc fugitives, along with Oth and Grosh, joined her there. Many of the other pokémon clustered off into little groups, as well. “Of course, I do have to wonder what inspired you to come to our aid.”

Valdrey shrugged, spreading her arms wide. “It’s just the kind of thing we do. Me and most of these guys here used to do this kind of work all the time back in the days after the Extinction. I guess we just never got tired of being able to lend a hand. Or, well. A figurative hand, in some cases.”

What the aurrade was describing sounded awfully familiar… “You wouldn’t happen to know an alakazam by the name of Sei Salma, would you?” Solonn asked her.

“Hmm… no, can’t say I do. What about you?” she asked Quiul.

“I’m afraid not,” the mercirance replied. “Sorry.”

“That’s fine,” Solonn said, supposing he shouldn’t be too surprised. It wasn’t as though Sei and her group of psychics were the only ones who could’ve come together and aid people in the wake of the Extinction.

“So I take it you—” Zdir nodded up toward Grosh. “—found her, or the other way around, and she took it from there,” she surmised aloud.

“Some locals directed me toward her,” Grosh said. “But yes.” He drew in a breath and let it out on something of a sigh. “I… regret not seeking help sooner than I did. I was just worried about not being there if you came back.”

“It’s all right,” she assured him. “No real harm came to us or the Virc as a result of your timing. They’ve been lucky these past few months.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than her eyes darted almost imperceptibly toward where the defectors were gathered together, and there was a hint of guilt in her expression. Solonn remembered Moriel mentioning one of their own not making it away from the Sinaji. He could only wonder if that person could’ve fared better if help had arrived sooner.

<I would nonetheless have liked to have been able to come back for you sooner,> Oth said. <Unfortunately, I lost my ability to teleport shortly after we rescued the abducted snorunt. We have yet to determine what caused this, and I have yet to regain the technique.>

Solonn’s eyes widened. That was a phrase he hadn’t heard for many years, not since the days of his involvement with the IPL. He’d heard of humans inducing the loss of techniques via artificial means, and he supposed he must’ve been told of it happening on its own, as well.

“Can it be cured?” Zereth asked.

“I can’t say for certain,” Quiul said. “All I know is that it’s not within my capability to heal.”

“It might be within the capability of the people at the Haven,” Solonn pointed out. “And… we might be able to get Jen back while we’re at it.”

Grosh frowned. “You didn’t get them back?”

“We did,” Zdir said, “but Oth’s teleportation misfired and then failed altogether before Jen’s memories could be recovered. He was left behind at the Haven.”

“Well then we’ve got to get him back!” Grosh said, throwing a glance at Quiul.

Solonn sighed. “It… might not be that simple,” he said. “Considering how long it’s been since he was left there, they might’ve decided that we abandoned him. Even if they haven’t, they’re not necessarily keeping him there. And even if we knew where they were keeping him, it might not be a simple matter to get him back.”

Grosh stared down at Solonn all the while as the latter spoke, and Solonn knew that whatever was going on behind those red eyes, it probably wasn’t acceptance. Solonn wasn’t fond of the way things were, either, nor was he especially fond of the way Zdir had told him to approach these complications back when he’d first recognized and spoken of them. But ultimately, he’d come to understand her position and agree with it.

“If it is, it is,” Zdir said, addressing them both and holding the two of them in her gaze as best she could. “We’ll bring Jen here. He’ll be safe. If not… he is, as Solonn has said, safe there, too. Safer than the Virc are in their own homes. We should do what we can for them first. We mustn’t delay them that help for much longer, and we mustn’t squander the time and generosity of our new allies.”

“I’m ready anytime,” Quiul said. “Just say the word.”

“Would it be all right if we could bring Zilag’s family here as well?” Solonn asked. “It would probably be a single trip.”

“Sure,” Quiul answered.

“See if they’re ready to go first,” Zdir instructed Oth.

Oth nodded in their fashion. A couple of minutes passed, during which a couple of the groups of gathered pokémon began conversing among themselves; then, <They are.>

“Very well,” Zdir said, and nodded toward Quiul.

The mercirance made beckoning gestures toward everyone who’d discussed retrieving Zilag’s family and Jen. But only Solonn and Oth moved toward her.

“I… think I ought to stay here,” Grosh said, though he sounded fairly regretful about it. “Jen’s obviously been through a lot since he was taken, and even though he knows about me, it might be a good idea for you to let him know well in advance that I’m gonna be here before he sees me. And… I don’t need to be in Virc-Dho again. Not even for a second.”

Solonn almost tried to reassure him on the first point, at least, but decided against it just as quickly. It made sense, he realized, especially if, gods forbid, Jen’s memories still hadn’t been restored and he had to learn about the massive steel-type all over again. As for the second point, he didn’t even think of arguing against it. Grosh would probably never be safe in Virc-Dho after what had happened, nor would he likely be comfortable there ever again.

“I’m going to stay behind, as well,” Zdir said. “There are a few things I wish to discuss with Valdrey and with the defectors; I might as well get to them.”

“I guess everyone’s ready, then,” Quiul said. “I assume at least one of you has been to the places we need to go?”

<Yes,> Oth answered. <I will transfer the memories to you at once if you wish.>

“Please do,” Quiul said.

As soon as the memories were transferred, “We’ll see you all later, then,” Quiul said, and then teleported away, taking Solonn and Oth with her.

* * *

Solonn, Oth, and Quiul appeared in front of the Haven. They’d already made their stop in Virc-Dho to retrieve Zilag and his family and dropped them off in Mordial.

Though the family had agreed well in advance to leave Virc-Dho someday, it was clear when the time had finally come that they had their regrets about it. Months ago, Oth had raised the possibility that they could still live among their own kind, in some other nation, in the hopes that letting them retain some familiar element in their lives would make the transition easier on them. The Hirashka were perfectly willing to give them a home in Sinnoh. But while the family and especially Hledas had latched on to the idea, the fact remained that they were still leaving their home and their lives as they’d known them behind. As they’d sat there, all at once in this alien environment and surrounded almost completely by strangers, their faces told that only now was the change they’d chosen truly sinking in.

Solonn felt for them, and as he entered the Haven with the mercirance and claydol at his sides, he hoped his newly displaced friends would be at peace with their new situation soon. At the same time, however, most of him was focused on Jen and Oth and the hopes, however cautious, that he’d be leaving Convergence tonight with the former at his side and the latter in full possession of all their powers once more.

The three crossed the lobby to the front desk, where a chansey sat watching them approach. “Can I help you?” she asked when they stopped before her.

<Yes,> Oth said. <We came here several months ago with eight snorunt who had suffered mental tampering and a glalie who was involved with the tamperer. One of the snorunt was left behind when I involuntarily teleported before his treatment was finished. I subsequently lost the ability to do so, voluntarily or otherwise. We have returned to retrieve him, as well as to inquire about our captive and to perhaps have my lost technique restored.>

The last item on that list was even more of a longshot than the first, Solonn knew. He’d recalled that there were once humans who could restore techniques just as there’d been some who could erase them, but he didn’t know if anything of that art had survived the Extinction. And similarly to the situation with Jen, if they determined that it would take too long to restore Oth’s ability to teleport, that restoration would be postponed.

“…One moment, please,” the chansey said, and turned her sights downward toward something on her desk and out of sight. “Teresa?” she said to what was apparently some sort of paging device there. “Could you come to the front desk, please?”

Soon after, another chansey arrived on the scene. “You came back,” she said simply.

Solonn nodded. “We never meant to leave,” he said.

“They claim something went awry with the claydol’s teleportation,” the chansey behind the desk said. “Something that caused them to teleport away with the others involuntarily and prevented them from coming back.”

“Have you been trying to teleport without any success all this time?” Teresa asked.

<Yes,> Oth said. <It is as though I never even knew the technique.>

“Hmm…” Teresa’s mouth drew into a thin line. “We might be dealing with a move deletion here,” she said. “We can run a couple of tests to confirm it, but in the event that your teleport technique has deleted itself, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.”

<We had anticipated as much,> Oth said, though they still sounded disappointed all the same.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to work this out. If you’ll follow me, we can find out.” Teresa began leading the way out of the lobby, and Oth, Solonn, and Quiul followed.

When they reached their destination, Solonn was expecting to find the same gardevoir there that he and the other fugitives had dealt with before. Instead a hypno stood behind that door, giving them an inquiring look. Teresa explained the situation to her, then motioned Oth into the room with the hypno, closed the door behind them, and began ushering the others toward a waiting room.

“What about Jen?” Solonn asked as he and Quiul followed her lead. “The snorunt who was left here,” he clarified. “My half-brother. Were his memories ever successfully recovered? Is he here?”

“I’m afraid the answer to both of those questions is ‘no’,” Teresa replied.

Solonn’s heart sank heavily. He’d dearly wanted the tampering to be undone, and the thought that he’d be greeted with confusion or disbelief or even fear whenever he finally reunited with Jen was hard to bear. Especially since it seemed likelier than ever that their reunion lay further in the future than he’d hoped.

“Is—” He tried to remember the gardevoir’s name but failed. “Is the gardevoir here? Can I speak with him?”

“If you’re referring to Adn, then I’m afraid that’s another ‘no’. He’s not here right now and won’t be back before the weekend is over.”

Solonn sighed, vaguely wondering just what, exactly, he’d hoped to accomplish anyway by talking with Adn. “Could you tell me where Jen is, at least?” he asked as the three of them entered the waiting room, turning to face Teresa directly as he spoke.

Teresa gave no response at first. Then she took a deep breath. “He was declared abandoned,” she told him. “He was placed in another’s custody, and I’m sorry, but we’re not at liberty to mention whose.”

Solonn stared at her. Their decision didn’t exactly come as a surprise, but he hadn’t expected to be barred from him so completely. “Is anyone?” he asked.

Teresa shook her head, insofar as she could. “I’m sorry.”

For a moment, Solonn couldn’t respond. The light in his eyes dimmed, and his throat threatened to close up on him. Then, “But… he’s safe, right? He’s being cared for?” He almost couldn’t continue. “…He’s happy?”

“I can assure you that he is,” Teresa said consolingly.

“…Good…” Solonn managed, very quietly. “That’s good… Now, what about the glalie we brought in, the one you called the authorities on?” he then asked. “Are you at liberty to tell us how that went?”

“Yes and no,” Teresa said. “I can tell you they didn’t really get anything out of him beyond his name and the fact that yes, he was involved with whoever altered the snorunt’s memories. He passed away in their custody before they could learn more, apparently of natural causes. I’m afraid that’s all I can say on the matter.”

Solonn’s eyes went wide, his brow furrowing over them. He’d suspected that they wouldn’t be getting much more information about the Sinaji from Anzen than they already had. It had sounded as though Oth had already found everything useful that Anzen actually knew during their scan. The reason why they definitely wouldn’t get any more now was rather more of a shock.

He pulled in a deep breath and released it. “Well, it… sounds like they can’t tell us anything we don’t already know,” he said. “Could you send them our thanks for trying, at least?”

Teresa nodded. “I most certainly could.”

She then gave the two of them a quick rundown on where certain facilities were before departing. Solonn watched her leave, then sank to the floor.

He heard Quiul sit down beside him. “Hmm… sounds a little fishy,” she said. “The whole business of your captured enemy perishing before he really had a chance to talk, I mean.”

“I wonder,” Quiul said, “if perhaps a killing mechanism of some kind was implanted. Maybe by whoever brainwashed those snorunt. It could have been set to go off if he was questioned too rigorously about what these people have been up to.”

“I don’t know… It seems like it would’ve been triggered by Oth’s scan if that were the case. They learned more from him than the police did, from what I gathered.”

“Hmm,” Quiul said again, then shrugged. “Maybe it really was just an unfortunate coincidence.”

“Maybe.” Solonn sighed. “More questions. I’d hoped to come back with more answers. And I’d hoped to come back with Jen.”

“I’m sure you would. But the way things have turned out tonight doesn’t mean you’ll never see him again, you know,” she told him gently.

“I know,” he said, though in a way it still sort of felt as though he definitely wouldn’t. “I just… wish I could see him with my own eyes. I wish I could really confirm that he’s all right… insofar as he is. And I wish I weren’t being treated like I can’t be trusted around him, for the gods’ sakes.”

Quiul laid a hand upon his back. “Someday this will be sorted out.”

Someday… Solonn drew in a breath that shuddered slightly, hoping she was right.

Eventually, Teresa returned with Oth beside her. Solonn and Quiul both rose to greet her.

“I’m afraid it was move deletion,” the chansey reported once she and Oth had entered the room.

<It is all right,> Oth assured everyone present. <I do not need to be able to teleport.>

Solonn supposed Oth was right, especially with Quiul on their side now. Still, he’d have liked at least some of the night’s endeavors in Convergence to have succeeded. “Thank you regardless,” he said, “and give the hypno my thanks, as well. At least now we know for sure.” Teresa nodded in acknowledgment.

“You’d have to speak with the police department about that,” Teresa said.

“I don’t think we have time for that,” Solonn said. “Zdir wanted us back as soon as possible.”

“Then we’d best not keep her waiting anymore. Thank you for your time,” Quiul said to Teresa.

“You’re welcome,” the chansey replied.

Oth joined Quiul and Solonn where they stood, and then the three of them departed.

After they’d vanished, Teresa stood there for a moment, blinking the lingering flash out of her eyes, then turned and left for elsewhere in the Haven. As she walked, she felt a strange sense of something being off, and not for the first time in the past few months.

She frowned at it, wondering if she should see Adn about it. But that would have to wait. For now, she simply carried on about her business, as did everyone around her.

The past few days had flown by, but they’d been incredibly busy. With the aid of the defectors, the force now assembling to move out had constructed their plan of attack. Already, he could see it coming together. There were Grosh and Oth, along with a small team of fighting-types, all pooling their efforts to gather boulders, both conjured and found. There were Zdir and Valdrey with Quiul, most likely reminding the mercirance of her own roles in the mission.

And here was Zilag, and Solonn was about as certain as could be of what he was up to. “They say our chances aren’t too bad.” They’d said it more than once. He’d clutched those claims like treasures.

“I know,” Zilag said. “They really do seem to know their stuff. And you’ve got some great allies on your side. But… well, this isn’t really about them. It’s about you.”

He circled around to meet Solonn’s gaze. “I… think you’re gonna do just fine. You, specifically. You personally. I’m not saying you could take them all on your own. I’m just saying… well, I just want you to know that I believe in you, all right?”

Solonn didn’t doubt his sincerity, not exactly. But he could see the quiver in Zilag’s eyelight. The reassurance was for them both.

But he smiled all the same. It was the least he could do. “Thanks,” he said.

The noise amidst the bleachers had almost entirely trickled down to the track by this point. The mission would begin soon.

“And there it is.” Solonn knew that Zilag wouldn’t have heard it himself. Zilag, as well as Hledas, would stay behind with the kids. This was mostly because neither of them had undergone anywhere near the amount of training as the ones who’d be heading out—they wouldn’t exactly be dead weight, but their chances of surviving the mission were less favorable all the same. And nobody liked the idea of orphaning their children.

Zilag nodded in acceptance. He moved back around to Solonn’s side, clearing the way for him to descend. “Go make ’em pay, all right? I’ll keep you in my thoughts.”

If it happens, I won’t forget you, that might have also meant. Solonn couldn’t keep the flicker out of his eyes—just how much concern was Zilag holding back for his sake? But again he smiled, and he gave an assuring nod, and with all the confidence he could muster, “Will do,” he said. “Take care, Zilag.”

“You too, buddy.”

Solonn drew and released a deep, steeling breath, then closed the remaining distance down the center aisle, taking his place at nearly the edge of the gathering. Over the heads of the people in front of him, he could see Zdir and Valdrey standing atop a winner’s podium that had been raised in the center of the arena, with Quiul waiting on the steps leading up to it.

“I trust everyone’s here?” Zdir spoke up. Even as she asked, her eyes were sweeping the crowd as they confirmed their presence; she’d know just fine whether anyone was missing, as well as if anyone wasn’t paying due attention.

Apparently satisfied with her findings, “All right. Now, I don’t need to tell any of you why you’re here. I don’t need to tell you what we’re about to do. But I do want to emphasize the value of your contributions today.

“The Virc, by and large, will never thank you. They’ll never know what you’ve done and will do for them. But no matter how their leadership might deny it, I am still one of them. I am still Virc. And on behalf of my people, I want to thank all of you in advance. For the lives we save, for the minds we put at ease, I thank you. Gods go with us all.”

“All right, let’s go kick some ass!” Valdrey said, smacking her hands together with a loud clank of armor on armor. “Split up, folks; it’s time to go…”

At her instructions, the crowd parted swiftly. For the most part, the teams were already assembled, but fitting everyone into the general vicinity of the arena below had required some strategic positioning of some of the larger pokémon.

Consequently, Solonn had to pick his way through the crowd to join Zdir’s group. Grosh had been assigned to her team, as well, as if Solonn needed any help figuring out where to go. He took his place at the steelix’s side and soon found himself crowded against it as the rest of their team gathered close together in the loose semicircle marked by Grosh’s half-coiled body.

“Hey,” Grosh spoke up, at which six different faces turned toward him before following his own line of sight and figuring out whom he was actually addressing.

“Hm?” Solonn responded, still keeping his eyes trained upward as best he could; his horns and the close quarters made leaning too far back unfeasible.

“You’re gonna make us proud,” Grosh told him, a smile playing about his eyes. “Me and her both.”

Solonn’s eyelight flickered at the mention of his mother, and he averted his gaze. “I’ll certainly do my best,” he promised, and not only to those who were physically present.

“Of course you will,” Grosh said. “You’re your mother’s son. You’re gonna have not only your own strength on your side today but hers, too. She’s not gonna let anything else happen to her boys. And neither am I.”

The flickering intensified… but a smile, however faint, formed around it. Solonn didn’t doubt Grosh’s dedication in the least… and he was sure that if it was truly possible, Azvida would be lending her figurative hand in their mission, as well.

Solonn met his father’s gaze once more. “Thank you,” he said earnestly.

With the departing pokémon now divided almost cleanly in half, Quiul descended from the podium and insinuated herself into the group on the far side of the arena, taking her place next to Valdrey. In the next moment, a golden aura swelled around the other team and took them away in a flash of light. Seconds later, Quiul returned for the rest.

As she squeezed her way in among his team, Solonn caught himself counting the passing moments. Counting his heartbeats. He tried to treat it as a countdown—not to their departure, but to their eventual victory. Soon, he told himself silently, it would be over. Or this part would be, at least.

We will win, he told himself as he took one deliberate breath after another. We will make it. Still, as he and the rest of his team left Wisteria behind, those heartbeats grew no softer.

* * *

The sunlight was more than a few minutes in the past now, replaced by the cold, blue glare of dozens of eyes. Most of their owners hung back, Solonn included, as Grosh, a gurdurr by the name of Thuras, and a pair of machoke siblings named Daran and Kala worked to block off one of the exits to the Sinaji’s territory with their gathered boulders.

This was just one of four such exits. Each of the teams had already sealed one apiece; separately, as before, they were tackling the last pair.

They’d encountered little resistance to speak of thus far: just a trio of guards at each of the exits they’d hit, all of whom now lay lifeless at their posts. But the team’s current task was not silent work. Stealth was hardly a priority in this venture. Avoiding confrontation was not their goal, not this time. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not they’d be noticed by Sinaji further in, but rather when.

There was nothing to do about that other than wait and keep a watch out for approaching trouble. Each of the teams was large enough to deal with being discovered, provided that the Sinaji didn’t bear down on either of them en masse—or so they hoped. So Solonn hoped, as he mindfully kept his eyes glued to the path leading inward rather than on his father, making a conscious effort to breathe steadily, holding a quick nhaza at the ready all the while.

Don’t jump the gun, he reminded himself. Fire when you have a reason to. No sooner.

Minutes passed, and no such reason came. Before long, “Got it,” Thuras announced. There was a momentary scraping of metal against stone as she retrieved her steel beam from wherever she’d set it down.

A few seconds’ delay; then, “So have they,” Zdir reported. With Zilag no longer reporting from Virc-Dho, Oth’s telepathic connection with him had been severed, and their connection to Zdir had been re-established.

“Come on,” she said, and began moving away from the now blocked exit. Her team filed out with her: nine glalie in the lead, herself included; the three fighting-types; Lirimi, an azumarill; and Grosh grinding his way along from the back, his heavy head looming above the procession. Quiul presently accompanied them, as well: a member of both teams, poised as she’d been all the while to teleport to the aid of either if needed.

The tunnel ahead of them came from the same place as the one leading to the fourth exit. There, they’d join the other team, and from that point they’d move forward as a unified force, able (they hoped) to withstand the full brunt of the Sinaji’s forces in a worst-case scenario.

Even though they could still only guess just what, apart from glalie, comprised those forces.

As they continued onward, Solonn gazed out over the heads of the ones before him, scanning for signs of life, friendly or otherwise, hoping his team would reach the meeting place soon.

The enemy reached it first.

The deep blue light of protect auras flooded the room. A volley of nhaza split the air, innumerable shots fired in unison—but not by Solonn, and as far as he was aware, not by anyone else on his side. He heard one body topple over, saw another—gray and muscular and roaring her lungs out—hurtle through the air on her own power—

—But never saw her land, forced to dodge a speeding glalie barreling right toward him. He wheeled about, his horn catching her as her shield fell; she hissed in pain and shrieked in fury. A number of other voices—one bottomless and all too familiar—cried and screeched and bellowed out in nearly the same instant.

There was no time to turn and find out why. His attacker returned the favor immediately, her horn slashing at his temple, narrowly missing his eye. He roared, and a fresh protect shield came to his summons as she tried once more to blind him. She shielded herself again in the nick of time, too.

Solonn caught her third strike with his horn, and for a few moments after, the two were locked in a fencing match, trying to get their horns past one another.

Then someone slammed into him from behind—he felt and heard something crack apart against his back, accompanied by a short, gurgling cry—and the force drove his horn deep into the eye socket of the glalie before him.

A burst of yellow light filled his vision as he wrenched himself free of the now-dead Sinaji. Nothing and no one caught him as his momentum threw him backward. He spun about in midair, regaining control of his levitation just in time to avoid plowing face-first into the glowing, segmented tail that fell to earth like a hammer before him, splitting the skull of the glalie below. Blood splashed against him, turning into a briefly-obscuring cloud of mist that cleared to reveal a torrent of flame roaring across the opposite end of the chamber.

Valdrey’s team had arrived.

Solonn didn’t stop to gawk at them or at what had become of the glalie hit by the rapidash’s flamethrower—not that he wanted to find out. He’d spotted Alij with a small horde of Sinaji all bearing down on him just as Alij’s aura failed him; without hesitation, Solonn charged to the rescue—only for the pair of glalie in his path to disappear into thin air as he struck them. Illusions!

Alij recognized this at the same time; he dealt a sweeping strike against the “multiple” Sinaji as they closed in, destroying a pair of double team clones and revealing their maker in one stroke. Solonn wasted no time in driving the identified enemy straight into the nearest wall. The Sinaji fell to the floor and didn’t rise again.

As Solonn leaned in to make sure the illusionist wasn’t playing dead, his massive frame glowing deep blue all the while, he noticed that the shouts and shots and cracks of colliding bodies were dying down. He turned and was met by a scene that calmed right before his eyes. The fight, it seemed, was over.

Easily more than a dozen glalie lay before him, their blood-mist heavy on the air. Some quivered slightly in place, still breathing, while others were plainly dead—some more plainly than others. He caught sight of one who looked as though they’d tried to swallow a bomb. He ripped his gaze away in an instant, retching in spite of himself.

Lirimi and Kala were down, too, against the wall near the Sinaji Grosh had smashed, their strange, opaque blood smeared across the floor. Quiul knelt before them, healing their injuries, while Daran watched her work, muttering to himself all the while. A prayer, Solonn supposed.

“Will they be all right?” Grosh asked from somewhere behind Solonn; the latter couldn’t help but glance back to make sure the steelix was all right. To Solonn’s immense gratitude, he was, from the looks of things. But the golduck standing at his side, with medicine-filled pouches belted to his waist, left Solonn wondering how long that had been the case.

Said golduck then offered Solonn a few berries for his own injuries, which he readily accepted. Within moments, he could feel the damage being undone.

Meanwhile Quiul wasn’t responding to Grosh’s question just yet, clearly focused on her work. When the multicolored aura surrounding her and her patients finally dimmed and vanished, “Yes… and no,” she answered. “You’ll live,” she said to the machoke and azumarill, “and you’ll heal. But not if you do any more fighting anytime soon.”

“I’m fine,” Kala insisted. She tried to push herself back up, but could barely get more than her upper torso off the ground before pain distorted her features and brought her back down with a snarl.

“No you’re not.” Daran laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Look sis… I know you’re worried about me. But I’m gonna be okay. I mean, look at us: we didn’t even lose any of our guys.”

“That’s… not true.”

Ronal’s voice carried a distinct and chillingly familiar gravity. Solonn didn’t need any further clarification on what had happened. It was only a question of just who had fallen.

The answer, he found, was Zereth. He lay face-up before Zdir, whose already dull eyelight was muted further still as she held him in her gaze. There was another dead glalie just a couple of feet away, whose face had been gouged so many times that they were completely unrecognizable.

“His killer,” Ronal identified; it seemed he’d followed Solonn’s line of sight.

Solonn looked away from the dead Sinaji, letting his gaze sweep across the room again in helpless, dreading curiosity over whether or not any of his other allies had suffered the same fate as Zereth. Oth thankfully hadn’t; they hovered near the center of the chamber with the luster of half a dozen cosmic powers making their dark hide glitter like the night sky, and no injuries that Solonn could detect. But they were only one of the people he was concerned about. “Was anyone else…”

“No,” Quiul said. “No one else but theirs…” She went quiet for a moment, staring into space. “Eight of theirs, to be exact,” she determined aloud. “And the ones still breathing have a long nap ahead of them.”

“There’ll be more.” Zdir turned to stare down an adjacent tunnel leading deeper into Sinaji territory. “This isn’t over yet.”

“It’s about to be,” Grosh said, and his spiked segments rotated restlessly. He shot a glare that seemed to burn despite its lightlessness at one of the still-living Sinaji, baring his teeth at him.

Solonn wondered just how many of the Sinaji had already fallen to Grosh alone. Not enough, no doubt. At least not as far as the steelix was concerned.

Even after all was said and done, even if they made it out of this alive and triumphant and none of their enemies survived, it might never really be enough for Grosh.

Quiul disappeared then, taking a very tired-looking Lirimi and a none-too-happy Kala with her.

Right before another rush of light filled the tunnels beyond.

Zdir and Valdrey’s forces promptly moved to intercept the incoming wave, to keep them bottlenecked at the entrances to the chamber. Several Sinaji poured in regardless before they could stem the tide, and a couple of them promptly burst into multiple illusory copies.

Solonn took out three of these in succession, then veered sharply out of the way as Haex the bisharp slashed a fourth into nothingness. His next target was solid; he felt the other’s armor shatter against his skull. Someone tore into his side as they rushed past; he hissed sharply but held his ground against the threat that chose to stick around.

The Sinaji he’d engaged lunged at him again at the first opportunity. Solonn lowered his face and took the impact in his heavily-armored head, then pulled back just far enough to rake his attacker’s face with his horn and fling him a short distance away with a toss of his head.

Solonn heard the Sinaji hit the nearby wall, but saw him come back for more. He spotted another pair of them coming at him from the right, but an ancient power barrage pummeled one of them into submission just as quickly. He threw himself out of the way of them both, then fired a nhaza at the already-injured Sinaji as he came to a stop. The attack hit its mark, its target dropping from midair at the impact.

<They are breaking through!> Oth called out. They launched more stones toward one of the tunnels, catching one of the newcomers square in the face, but she endured the assault well enough to unleash a parting shot before a steel beam upside her head brought her down.

Her ice beam caught Grosh in the midst of another iron tail attack. The silver glow faded from around the lower third of him, and he came crashing down, forcing Solonn and several others to scatter in his wake.

He’s alive, Solonn frantically assured himself, he has to be… He couldn’t afford a glance to confirm it, not with jets of something deep purple and foul-smelling peppering the floor bare inches away. He threw his shield up—only to take a toxic shot from another source somewhere behind him the moment it fell.

His hide tingled where it struck him, then burned. He hissed, then groaned as the poison started to kick in. Shaking it off to the best of his ability, he spun about to ram his assailant, hoping to spot Quiul somewhere nearby in the process. Had she even returned yet? Had she tried, only to be deflected back from whence she’d come by a body thrown or charging into her path?

Solonn felt the breath explode out of him as armor—both his own and his target’s—shattered at his heavy impact. The other glalie fell, eyes rolling back, and Solonn was sure he’d be following suit before too long if no one neutralized the poison, all too certain of what the attack he’d suffered had been. He let out a ragged breath, biting back a surge of nausea. His body wanted nothing more than to try and purge the sickness out and sleep off the rest… but the fight still raged on all around him. He was still needed…

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind, but to avail. Facing forward again, he saw two glalie—or one glalie and an illusion—charging him in tandem, horns first. In his delirium, he reacted on instinct, trying to raise a shield—but none came.

Then a powerful burst of water blasted the copy out of existence and its maker yards away. The golduck responsible dropped to a three-point stance in front of Solonn. Barely any sooner than he’d landed, he’d whipped a handful of berries out of his pouch.

He rapped on Solonn’s teeth with his free hand. “Open up, b—” He broke off mid-word to give the glalie he’d hydro pumped moments ago a second helping. But Solonn managed to get the message through the growing pain and illness, albeit barely. His jaws parted, but shuddered all the while; the golduck barely managed to get the berries past them before they helplessly slammed shut.

The last thing Solonn felt like doing right now was eating, but he had just enough sense left to force the medicinal fruits down. Their effects, while not instantaneous, were swift nonetheless; in no time, he was back off the floor, alert and well once more, his wounds no longer bleeding.

He saw something huge and reflective swing back up into view, with something blue darting away from him—Grosh had been revived. Hope welled back up inside Solonn, putting all the more fight back into him—he charged the next Sinaji he singled out full-force. Another caught the business end of his horn soon after.

The din began to fade out once more, and individual shapes became more readily discernible amid the chaos once again. Solonn dared to wonder if maybe it was all nearing an end. Then something new crept into his vision: snaking branches of ice invading the space surrounding them, growing and fanning out and dancing rhythmically.

He wasn’t responsible for them, and he doubted anyone else on his side was, either. Not wanting to find out what the enemy had in mind with the display the hard way, he tried to will it out of being. The branches began withdrawing quickly, very quickly, suggesting more minds than his own trying to override their conjurer’s control… but then halted in their retreat. They quivered, as if uncertain… and indeed, Solonn found himself no longer sure that he wanted their dance to end. A breath later, he was completely convinced that he didn’t.

As he stared, transfixed, at the hypnotic ice formation, he began to want something else altogether. Something far less benign.

His will to fight transformed. Vindictive anguish took its place, and it pulled his gaze away from the ice branches at last and redirected it toward the rapidash a short distance away until the brightness of the flamethrower erupting from the latter’s mouth forced him to close his eyes. But no matter. He was already locked on to his target, already blindly speeding toward the alien creature whom he now viewed as the enemy, as one of those responsible for the death of countless fellow Virc, the death of his mother…

And then his barely-thought notions of vengeance blew apart, and he could have sworn the rest of him was doing likewise.

He screamed so loudly that his voice gave out almost immediately, leaving him gasping and choking. His eyes screwed even more tightly shut, but he could still see blazing orange light stabbing into them. He dropped involuntarily, rolling onto his back and shaking uncontrollably, still fighting to breathe, his heart racing painfully. Only one coherent thought endured the onslaught: the raw, primal, terrifying certainty that he was dying.

Until it, along with all the pain, all the terror, and everything else, simply fell away.

Solonn fumbled about mentally for a moment, still very dazed, trying to remember just whose voice that was. The image of the mercirance it belonged to finally answered the summons. She made it… Even in the midst of all this chaos, she’d found her way back in.

Except… where had the chaos gone? He could no longer hear any signs of battle, couldn’t hear anything at all except scattered mutterings and the occasional pained sound from someone or another.

“There,” Quiul said, sounding a bit winded, “there. That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid. But you are stable, rest assured.”

At her words, Solonn dared to try and open his eyes again, and this time he managed to keep them open. No fighting greeted them, no colliding bodies, no stones or beams in flight.

“Is it really over?” he asked, his voice still terribly hoarse.

“Don’t know,” Quiul responded.

“God, I hope so. You had me worried out of my mind there…”

Solonn looked up, grimacing at the wave of dizziness that accompanied the motion. His expression softened as much as it could at the sight of his father looking down at him from above with tears shimmering in his crimson eyes.

The steelix’s expression, meanwhile, did nearly the opposite as he cast a glance across the room. More gently than he’d moved before, Solonn rolled to face forward and follow it, and he saw that rapidash there, talking to Valdrey about something. She was reassuring him, from what Solonn could hear of the conversation.

Quiul looked off in that direction, too. She sighed faintly. “Grosh… you do realize it wasn’t his fault, right? It wasn’t anyone’s fault but the one who hijacked his brain.”

Hijacked his brain… Just the same as what had happened to him, Solonn recognized. “They did the same to me,” he said.

“And to half of the rest of us. At least.” Valdrey’s voice and hoofbeats drew Solonn’s attention; he found the aurrade striding in slow circles around another glalie who was lying on the ground—a glalie like none he’d ever seen before. A row of spikes ran along each of the stranger’s brows, and while it was hard to tell for certain with their light extinguished, the eyes beneath them didn’t look blue.

“I see you’ve noticed our late arrival here,” Valdrey said. “We think he’s the one who made you turn on each other.” She gave him a little kick with one of her forehooves. “Fried his own brain in the process, though.”

“He was dead inside his own skull,” Quiul said, and she almost sounded pitying. Almost. “The rest of him just hadn’t cottoned on yet.”

That likely answered the question of what, and who, had killed the stranger. But a multitude of questions still lingered about him. He was a hybrid of some sort, Solonn suspected… but what sort of parentage could have possibly given him abilities like those?

Solonn gave the slightest shake of his head, sighing bitterly to himself. They’d known to expect a mind-controller among the Sinaji. They’d been prepared to prioritize any non-glalie they saw who wasn’t on their side. He would’ve never guessed that such a threat could come from one of his own kind.

And apparently he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t. “I’m so sorry,” Moriel said quietly. “I had no idea they had any such thing on their side—I’ve never seen a glalie like this in my entire life.”

“I don’t think any of us have,” Evane said. Alij and Viraya both shook their heads, confirming it.

<You are not at any fault,> Oth said. <There is much your leadership did not see fit to tell you.>

“That… that’s true,” Moriel acknowledged. But the way she still frowned uneasily at the hypnotist, guilt dampening the light in her eyes, told that she wasn’t entirely consoled just yet.

Solonn turned his attention away from the glalie with the spiked brows, and though his body and especially his head protested, he rose from the spot, intent on finding out just how much that oversight had cost them—more to the point, if it had cost him anyone he was close to.

The first such question he had in mind came with a welcome answer, at least. Once again, Oth had made it through all right. They leaned in midair against the wall near the tunnel Zdir’s team had entered through, their levitation a little shaky, but otherwise they looked just fine.

Solonn moved over to join the claydol. “How many?” he asked. That was as far as he could stand to elaborate on the question, and not only because his throat was still so sore. He hoped that the claydol and their many eyes could assess the situation, or had already done so, more quickly and thoroughly than he could or wanted to at this point.

<All but eleven of the Sinaji who entered this cavern have now been slain,> Oth reported, though their tone made it sound almost as much like a confession, <as well as five among our number.>

Solonn fought back an urge to do a quick head count. Too many bodies. Too much mist, drawn into his lungs on every breath… He tried to shake off the unbidden, imagined sensation of it seeping into his veins, consuming him from within. It came right back.

He shuddered hard. “Who?” he managed to spit out.

<Three of the Hirashka: Arkhiah, Ahsrishasa, and Ghirath. Alisari and Daran were also slain.>

Solonn felt his heart sink at that last name. He thought of Kala, waiting back in Mordial for her brother… who would never return. The preceding name clicked soon after, and the weight in his chest grew even heavier—Alisari was the golduck, the one who’d likely saved his life by neutralizing the poison. And the Hirashka soldiers, so willing to put themselves on the line for foreigners they didn’t even know—such a far cry from what the Virc forces would have offered them…

<Three others among us have been put out of commission,> Oth went on. <Zyuirilziurn, Taldira… and Zdir.>

Solonn abruptly turned to face the claydol. “How serious is it? Will she be all right?”

<Quiul gave a favorable prognosis,> Oth replied, <but her recovery is expected to take a considerable while due to her age.>

Her age. The shock drained out of Solonn almost all at once. Of course… of course she’d taken a beating. It was a wonder she hadn’t been killed outright, really. But with all she’d done for them, with all the time he’d spent training under her… even now, some tiny part of him was surprised at the reminder that no, she wasn’t invincible.

He spotted her across the room: she was sitting up with a visible effort. Zyuirilziurn the cryogonal and Taldira the feraligatr were at her sides, both looking worse for wear. She met his gaze—her eyes still glowing, thank the gods—and nodded toward him weakly, as if to silently confirm that she would indeed be just fine.

“Heads up, we’ve got company,” Valdrey called out, and nearly every eye in the vicinity turned toward her. Past her, hesitating just outside the chamber, there hovered another of those thorn-bearing glalie. This one’s eyes still burned bright, though their light flickered at the sight before them, and there was no question about it this time: they were green, luridly so.

Hooves were thundering and glalie were surging and a bellowing steelix was lunging toward the new arrival in an instant.

“No, stop!” she cried out, barely audible over the horde closing in on her. “Please, I surrender!”

“Hold it!” Valdrey shouted, and her voice was far louder and clearer than usual. A glance in her direction told Solonn that her faceplates had retracted, revealing her gray, humanoid face.

One of Haex’s armblades split the floor in front of the newcomer, making her dart several inches backward. Grosh brought his head very, very close to the green-eyed glalie, growling deep in his throat.

Valdrey began striding closer, waving pokémon out of her way, her luminous sword at the ready all the while. As she moved forward, Oth began following close behind.

“You’d best be telling the truth,” Valdrey warned the newcomer, her head tilted back to peer down at her. “Otherwise it’s gonna get a little hazier in here.”

The newcomer nodded, her whole body shaking as she met the aurrade’s gaze once more. “We’ll all surrender, I promise you. Just… please…” She tried to look at some point beyond where Valdrey stood, but it was clear that someone was in the way. “Let me see him, just one more time.”

“We will,” Valdrey said, “after Oth is done with you.”

“Oth? What…” Her green eyes flitted about, trying to determine who Valdrey could mean. “What are you going to do?”

“Oth’s just gonna have a little peek into your head.” Valdrey tapped at her helmet with her free hand for emphasis. “Just to make sure you aren’t trying to pull a fast one on us. I can’t speak for anyone else here, really, but personally, I’m not a big fan of liars.”

The newcomer’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open slightly. “I’m not lying,” she insisted, sounding more than a little offended. “There are so few of us now, and so many of you and your… your monsters…” Grosh snarled in warning at that, at which the newcomer flinched, but then she resumed her affronted stare at Valdrey.

“It’s in your best interests to allow this,” Ronal told the newcomer. “Your safety—your life—is on the line.”

Her face twisted, her eyelight wavering all the more as she hung there in place, still quaking. Finally, she closed her eyes and nodded in acquiescence.

“Have at it,” Valdrey said, extending an arm toward the newcomer.

Oth placed themself before her, silent and still in their work even as their subject hissed and shuddered. She only stopped doing so once they backed off, but even then she looked no more comfortable than she had since arriving there.

“So what’d you find?” Valdrey asked the claydol.

<Sathir is being sincere,> they confirmed.

Valdrey held the newcomer in her gaze for one last moment before sheathing her sword. “Then today’s your lucky day,” she said, “relatively speaking.”

The discomfort in Sathir’s expression turned to something distinctly bitter. “Can I see him now?” she asked coldly.

“He’s all yours,” Valdrey said, and stepped out of the way.

Sathir drifted forward, casting distrustful looks at the unfamiliar creatures among the small crowd of glalie. She soon came to a stop, sinking to the floor before the dead hypnotist. A hiss shuddered through her gritted teeth, then gave way to sobbing.

Sathir looked to him with disgust written all over her features. “I don’t owe you any more answers,” she said, her voice hitching mid-sentence. But then she sighed, turning back to face the fallen glalie again. “But you’ll just take any answers you want from me, won’t you.”

Before anyone could affirm or refute that statement, “My mate,” she informed them, “and the father of my child.” She sighed again, more bitterly this time, lowering her head. “There are so few of my people left in this world. Even fewer now, thanks to you.”

“Hey now. It was his bright idea to try and brainwash all of us at once that landed him in that position,” Narzen said.

Sathir’s gaze shot back up, and she leveled the sort of wild, furious stare at him that suggested she wanted to call him a filthy liar. But it quickly faltered. “Damn it, Averin…” she said almost voicelessly to her lifeless mate. “I told you not to try it…”

“You all should have,” Solonn spoke up. “Why?” he demanded. “Why did you do this to my brother? He doesn’t even recognize me now.” The lines of his face hardened with anguish, his eyelight going shaky. “He’s been stranded across the ocean, and if I ever see him again…” He drew in a rattling breath that turned to stone in his throat. “…I’ll have to tell him that both his mother and his father are gone. Because of you. Why?” he hissed again, his eyes momentarily blazing.

Sathir wilted almost imperceptibly under his gaze. She swallowed audibly. “It was never supposed to go this far,” she said in a brittle voice. “When we sought refuge with the Sinaji, we had no idea how dangerous they were… They were outcasts, like us. We thought we were one and the same, or almost the same… We were stupid,” she spat.

She lowered her head again. “We began bewitching a few of them, their leaders… just enough to make them safe company. We used their territory as sanctuary from the Virc, with the Sinaji as guards… but at some point, that ceased to be enough. We became resentful of the Virc for making us live the way we do, the way we have for generations… the fact that so many of us never hatched and so many have been born sick and stayed sick… All at once, we were waging war on the Virc, using the Sinaji as our soldiers. The Virc children they captured for us… would’ve joined them.”

Solonn just stared agape at her as she sat there shaking, at a loss for words in the wake of her confession. Those children could’ve been sent to kill members of their own families, or to be killed by them. He might have been forced to take Jen’s life—and with the latter having surely evolved in that scenario, Solonn might’ve never known that the blood on his horns was his half-brother’s, that it would’ve been his fault that he and Jen would never truly reunite.

The thought of what his mother would think of that came to mind, and he snarled. “Where are the rest of your people?” he demanded.

Sathir hesitated to answer, still shaking.

“We will do them no harm, provided they agree to surrender as you have,” Quiul said. It sounded as though she were genuinely trying to sound reassuring, but her tone was missing a little of its usual warmth.

The guards didn’t argue. Nothing about them suggested that any of them even thought to disagree. Most likely “bewitched”, Solonn guessed.

The four of them moved aside, lingering against the walls. “Stay there,” Sathir ordered them; then, “Remove the barricade,” she called out to whomever was beyond it, “and don’t be alarmed.”

There was a delay before the barrier showed any changes. Muffled, uneasy-sounding voices could be heard from the tunnel beyond. Then, slowly, the wall came down.

“There they are,” Sathir all but whispered. “The last of the Rannia.”

Within the chamber that was now revealed, two other glalie like Sathir huddled against the far wall. A very small snorunt, her eyes as green as the rest of the Rannia’s, leaned against one of them, looking very listless. A third Rannian glalie hovered a bit closer to where the barrier had stood, but the look on her face suggested that she’d forgotten why she’d come forward.

And with them, staring in bewilderment, were Sanaika and Kashisha, with a number of blue-eyed and plainly frightened snorunt hiding and shaking behind the two of them and another pair of Sinaji.

Not taking his eyes off the strangers for even a second, “Sathir… what the hell is going on here?” Sanaika demanded.

“Party’s over,” Valdrey responded. “Your forces are down, save for you—” She swept a hand across the room, indicating the entire enemy presence therein. “—and those four out there. Your hypnotist friend here has surrendered unconditionally. I’d follow suit if I were you.”

Kashisha gawked openly at the crowd, shocked or furious or both. Sanaika just stared in silence for a moment, an unspoken dare to contradict Valdrey etched into his features.

“It’s true,” Sathir said sullenly. “We have to cooperate. If we don’t… Look at them, Sanaika. My family can’t defend themselves against such creatures. They’ll slaughter us.”

“Maybe they can’t,” the Rannia who still hovered in the middle of the room said. Her eyes were wild and blazing, and her jaws quivered in the gaps between words as if itching for something to sink their teeth into. “But I can, and you can, and…” She shook her head fiercely. “No, I… I can’t give in. I won’t give in!” A snarl of erratically-twitching ice tendrils burst into being around her, forcing nearly everyone around her to leap or dart out of the way. “I won’t—”

There was a sound like a small thunderclap, and down she went, alive but insensible. Her ice sculpture vanished into vapors in an instant under the control of another now, any hypnotic command it might’ve carried extinguished before it could really take root.

Sathir gazed upon her with pity for a moment, then moved toward Sanaika. “I need to know if you’re going to do this of your own accord or if I’ll have to make you do it. I don’t want to, but I will if you leave me no choice.”

“I’m not answering that question,” Sanaika said. “Not until I know what’s going to become of us if we surrender. We die if we keep fighting; do I understand correctly? The kids, too?”

<No,> Oth said. <The snorunt pose no appreciable threat. They will be relocated, as will any of you who agree to our terms.>

“Speaking of the snorunt… were these stolen, too?” Narzen asked.

“No, they most certainly were not,” one of the other Sinaji said. “How dare you even insinuate such a thing; these children belong to our people and always have.”

The Sinaji who’d spoken hesitated at first, but then nodded, closing her eyes. Moments later, <These children were not kidnapped,> Oth said.

“That’s good…” Moriel said.

“So you’re… going to take us away… Where?” the fourth Sinaji glalie in the room demanded. “Do we get any say in the matter?”

“You can come with us to the Hirashka nation, if you wish.” Roskharha came forward, at which a couple of his surviving countrymen cast uncomfortable looks his way. Solonn did likewise—the thought of these mind-controllers and dangerous exiles headed for the same destination as one of his best friends and the family thereof didn’t sit very well with him at all.

“Captain… are you sure that’s advisable?” one of the Hirashka asked.

“They’re few enough that we can handle them. Yes, the green-eyes, too,” he answered preemptively; Sathir glared and hissed at him in response. “We’ll involve the Sisterhood if need be.”

“Hopefully that won’t be necessary,” another of the Hirashka said, and gave a faint shudder.

“It’s up to you,” Valdrey said. “Do you wanna move to Sinnoh with these nice, gracious glalie?”

<You may not get another opportunity to live among your own kind in the foreseeable future,> Oth pointed out.

“…I’ll go,” Sathir said. “And my family will go with me.”

Sanaika exchanged glances with Kashisha, at which she gave a melodramatic sigh that made her opinion of the circumstances all too clear. Nonetheless, she nodded in assent.

“Fine,” Sanaika said, “fine. And I suppose we have to leave right this instant?”

“Sounds good to me. What does Zdir think?” Valdrey asked.

There was a brief silence as Oth consulted with Zdir—if indeed she was still in any fit state to respond at the moment. Apparently she was; <Zdir is in favor of this course of action.>

“Roskharha?” Valdrey prompted next.

“I’m ready,” he responded.

“Quiul? You up to another jump right now?”

“I’m up to several more, if it comes to that.”

“That’s good—I think it’ll take at least two. Wouldn’t want you working yourself to a twitching heap,” Valdrey said. “Thuras? Go tell the boys back there to round up the live ones so we can head out.”

The gurdurr gave a quick nod and headed back down the tunnel at Valdrey’s request.

Sathir, meanwhile, had drifted off to join the three Rannia who were still awake. “Mother? Father? We have to go with them.” She spoke very slowly and deliberately, as if concerned that they wouldn’t understand her otherwise.

Sathir held her tongue, apparently waiting for her mother’s ramblings to resume, but they did no such thing. “No… no, this is someone else. Our… our new saviors.” She didn’t bother to conceal the bitter sarcasm that accompanied those words, but it seemed lost on both of her parents.

“Oh… all right,” her mother said, then began moving unhurriedly toward the invaders along with her mate; not missing a beat, Sathir conjured a cradle of ice to catch the infant who’d been leaning against the former. The cradle rose on a stalk like a sprouting plant, then moved forward to lay the child down on top of Sathir’s head and shifted to secure her there.

Sanaika moved forward next, with Kashisha grudgingly following. The other Sinaji glalie in the room shepherded the snorunt along to join them, with some difficulty; some of the children were still too terrified to move at first. Solonn couldn’t help but regard them with pity—they hadn’t asked to be here, and they’d had no hand in the Sinaji’s crimes. They probably weren’t even aware of them.

It’s over, he told himself. They don’t have to be afraid anymore. None of us do.

Or so he hoped. Trusting it… was harder. He wanted to believe that yes, the Hirashka and their “Sisterhood”, whatever that entailed, could keep them in check, and that the Sinaji who had yet to wake up would cooperate just as the ones in this room had. That Zilag and Hledas and their daughters would be safe. But with no way to know with absolute certainty that they would, true comfort eluded him.

To say nothing of the effect that a certain loose end remaining in Convergence was having on his ability to really, truly feel as though the struggle were over.

It was then that Thuras returned. “Job’s done,” she reported.

“Good. Go back and stay with them, all right? We’ll be back for the rest of you here shortly,” Valdrey said.

As Thuras departed the scene once more, “Gather together, everyone,” Quiul instructed, motioning toward everyone present to draw closer. The Sinaji and Rannia complied, though not quite in unison; a couple of the children resisted up to nearly the last moment. Once they and everyone else were finally corralled, the former territory of the Sinaji disappeared from view in a golden flash.

* * *

“And you’re sure that’s all of them?” Hledas asked.

“All of the survivors, yes,” Solonn confirmed. “Oth made sure of it.”

Across the field in a snowy valley in Sinnoh, the remnants of the Sinaji—minus two of the survivors of the initial battle, who’d refused to be taken alive and who’d subsequently been dispatched by Sanaika himself—muttered to one another and surveyed their new surroundings with varying degrees of apprehension.

“I’m sure they’ll be kept in line just fine,” Zilag assured her. Even as he spoke, however, he eyed Kashisha uneasily. That, Solonn imagined, was a reunion his friend would’ve rather avoided.

“So now what?” Zilag asked. “Are you gonna stay here with us, too?”

Solonn’s thoughts briefly drifted elsewhere, his eyes following soon after. His geographical knowledge was a bit rusty after so many years between him and his schooling, but he suspected that Hoenn lay in that direction.

He and Zilag were of very different minds when it came to seeing their siblings again.

“Ultimately,” he finally answered. “But first… I have to go back to Convergence. I have to find him.” He didn’t bother to elaborate. He knew he didn’t need to. “Even if we have to live apart from now on… I want to try and give back what was taken from him. He deserves to know that there’s something left of his family, his real family.”

Zilag smiled. “I had the feeling you’d say that. I wouldn’t mind going with you and getting a better look at that place, you know? From what I remember, it was pretty crazy, heh. In a good way,” he clarified quickly. “But… yeah. I’d really feel better sticking close to my family right now, all things considered.”

“Of course,” Solonn said, nodding in understanding. He rose. “I’ll go find out if and when Quiul’s ready,” he said, “and let the relevant parties know where I’m going. I suppose this is goodbye, for now.”

“Suppose so. Goodbye, and good luck,” Zilag said, at which Hledas echoed his farewell and Ryneika attempted to do so.

With that, Solonn set off in search of Quiul. But before he got very far, “Um… hey. I overheard what you were talking about there, and…”

Solonn turned and saw Moriel there behind him. Alij, Evane, and Viraya were with her. “Yes… what of it?” he asked.

“We were wondering if you’d be opposed to us going with you,” Moriel said. “I mean… from what I understand, there has to be some sort of funny business going on where your brother’s concerned. First he mysteriously can’t be cured of his bewitching, and then the Sinaji you brought over there mysteriously dies? Something’s up.”

“Something is very likely up,” Solonn agreed, and as he zoomed out from his goal in this endeavor and looked more intently at the process that might be involved in getting there, having these people accompany him started to look like a good idea. Possibly a very good idea. Having very many more than that was probably ill-advised—the Hirashka nation would do well to have at least a little more than a skeleton crew keeping a watch over the Sinaji and the Rannia, Sisterhood or no Sisterhood. But surely, or hopefully, they could spare a small handful.

“You’re absolutely welcome to join me,” he said. “Thank you.”

“It’s the least we can do,” Moriel said. Evane nodded in agreement, while her sister and Alij looked on in silence but showed no signs of dissent.

Solonn began leading them away, but not toward his original target. He was all in favor of having the defectors accompany him back to Hoenn for a bit, but a bad idea was a bad idea, and on the chance that pulling them away from here counted as one, he decided to seek a second opinion.

When he reached the person he’d had in mind, he found a potential third opinion there along with her. Good. Roskharha sat there by Zdir’s side, the latter still looking somewhat weak but clearly stable and on the mend.

“Yes?” Zdir inquired hoarsely, taking in the small pack of glalie that had come before her.

“We want to go back to Convergence for… well, for an indeterminate length of time,” Solonn told her. “But… only if the people here can spare us.”

Zdir gave Roskharha a questioning glance. He sized up the would-be rescue party for a moment, seemingly in thought. “I’d say so,” he finally decided.

“Go and get your brother, then,” Zdir said.

Solonn lowered his head, relieved. “Thank you,” he said, and resumed his search for Quiul.

By the time he caught up with her, he’d run into both Oth and Grosh. Upon informing each of them of his plans, they’d requested to go with him and insisted upon going with him, respectively.

After confirming that the Hirashka nation and its new citizens could afford their absence, too, he’d agreed to their wishes, and now the lot of them hovered or coiled before Quiul, with Solonn ready to ask for her assistance.

But she beat him to the punch. “Let me guess: you’ve all got somewhere you need to go, right?” she asked a bit playfully.

“Yes,” Solonn said. “We need you to take us to Convergence, if you would. Jen’s still there, and he might still need help recovering his memories.”

“Well… I’m afraid I’m not much use to you where the latter’s concerned,” Quiul admitted. “But as far as the former goes, sure thing.”

<If I might make a suggestion…> Oth spoke up. Everyone turned to face them. <I think we would do well to establish a link between the two of us,> they said, pointing a turret-hand toward Quiul. With less need for Zdir to dispense orders to her forces now, the claydol was no longer telepathically connected to her, thereby freeing up the link for another. <We would thereby be able to call upon you when we are ready to return.>

“Was just about to suggest the same thing, actually,” Quiul said. “And don’t worry: I can keep the ghostliness to myself just fine,” she assured them.

<I had no doubts that you could,> Oth said. If they actually did have any, they concealed that fact very well.

Quiul made a beckoning motion, and Oth apparently interpreted the prompt correctly; <It is done,> they announced.

“Okay then, away we go…” Quiul said. And with that, she transported them all to Convergence, and to the hope of undoing the last lingering crime of the Sinaji.

It wasn’t the first time Solonn had been in Convergence in recent memory, but it felt like it all the same. Possibly because, for the first time in years, he was out in the open, looking upon its streets and landmarks directly rather than through a window.

Directly, and with his own eyes.

“Okay, this… this is not what I expected somehow.”

Solonn turned toward Evane and the others who were now left alone with him, their teleporter already back in Mordial. That’s right, he acknowledged, they’ve never been here before. The issue wasn’t an unfamiliarity with human civilization; he knew that much. If anything, it was the familiarity of the place that was throwing them off.

“Weren’t expecting it to be this human, were you?” he asked.

“Well… no,” Evane said. “I mean, from the way you described it, with pokémon wandering about and doing human jobs… it didn’t really sound like any human place I’d ever been.”

“It’s not like most other human places in general,” Solonn told her. Which was still true, he suspected. This city was being maintained by the pokémon trained to work here, but the majority of human cities probably looked more like Wisteria, or worse.

He heard heavy metal armor grinding against the pavement and turned to regard Grosh. “Guess we might as well start looking, right?” the steelix said.

“Guess so,” Solonn replied, though he had no solid idea of where to begin.

“Probably,” Solonn agreed; Jen’s new keepers had almost certainly taken him home by now. Or keeper, if the suspicions that he and the others shared were true. The more he’d thought about it, the harder it had become to believe that the gardevoir from the Haven had truly been unable to restore Jen’s memories. Why he’d chosen not to, however, was still anyone’s guess. “We’ll come back to the Haven if we must, but I strongly suspect he’s elsewhere.”

“Right. So I guess here’s as good a place to start as any,” Moriel supposed aloud. She swept a glance down the avenue. “This way, maybe?” she asked, nodding toward one of the closer streets.

“You can go that way. I think the rest of us would do well to split up,” Solonn said. “But we won’t go alone, any of us,” he quickly amended. “We’ll go in pairs, and then the remaining three can go together.” Not that they’d be much less vulnerable if they were cornered that way, of course. But they’d be less conspicuous than they would in a unified search party, and possibly quicker and more effective. Which would likely do Jen a favor, as far as Solonn was concerned. The sooner his brother was extracted from this mess, the better.

“How does that sound?” he asked the others.

Grosh made a rumbling sound. “I don’t know,” he said, rotating a few of his segments. “I don’t think I like the idea of leaving you alone with God knows what going on around here.”

“Then you can come with me,” Solonn suggested.

“I meant all of you,” Grosh said. He looked down at the small crowd of glalie and the lone claydol with unease. “After all you people have done for me, and for her memory… I’d just hate for something to happen to any of you that I could’ve stopped, you know?”

Solonn didn’t respond, other than to avert his gaze slightly. Yes, he understood. But…

<We do have a better chance of finding some sign of him if we split up,> Oth spoke up, unwittingly sparing Solonn a few breaths and a bit of guilt. <If the ones who are keeping him see us coming all at once, they will most likely anticipate an attack and flee. With all of us moving in the same direction, they could simply keep fleeing.>

“By that reasoning, we should all go in separate directions. No pairs, no trios,” Viraya said.

“Huh. All right, then. We’ll have a vote,” Moriel suggested. “All in favor of each of us going alone?”

Viraya nodded without hesitation. Alij followed suit soon after.

“All in favor of all of us sticking together?”

“Aye,” Grosh said.

“All right, and all in favor of us splitting into small groups?” Here Moriel cast her own vote, inclining her head. Solonn did likewise, and shortly after he did, “That’s four in favor of small groups. The majority wins.”

“Hold it,” Grosh said. All eyes shifted his way. “You’re talking about pulling random people off the street and questioning them. How do you know you can trust what they say if you don’t have them to confirm it?” He dipped his head toward Oth.

That, Solonn had to admit, was a valid point. Especially with the possibility of a rogue psychic in the picture, who could be making people believe things that weren’t true. Oth could not only detect lies but also signs of mental tampering. Their abilities might prove vital in obtaining actual leads.

But a solution, or the closest thing to one that he could think of, occurred to him quickly. It occurred to Evane, too; “We’ll just have to bring anyone who’ll cooperate to a meeting place,” she said. “Oth can scan them all once we’re finished for the day.”

“It’s not ideal,” Moriel said, “but I think it’s going to have to do.” She glanced around, thinking; then, “Let’s meet back here when we’re done, okay?” she suggested. Most of the others nodded in agreement, and almost no one raised any objections.

Almost no one. Grosh grumbled again, louder this time. But he circled around the crowd to Solonn’s side all the same. “Take care of yourselves,” he pleaded with the others. “Please.”

“We’ll do our best,” Evane promised. “Come on, sis,” she said, and Viraya began following her away. Moriel and Alij paired off soon after.

<I will be accompanying the two of you, then,> Oth said to Solonn and Grosh, <assuming neither of you mind.>

Beside him, Grosh shook his head in reassurance, and Oth took that as their cue to move the rest of the way forward. With that, the three of them took off, avoiding the streets the others had chosen.

Traffic was light, relatively speaking. Lighter than Solonn remembered it being during this time of the evening. He wondered how many of Convergence’s surviving citizens had given up driving since the Extinction. Or for that matter, how many had simply up and left the town.

There were still plenty who hadn’t, though. Some were presently strolling or floating down the street by their own power, and nearly all of them stopped in their tracks to take note of the noisy metal serpent grinding along past them. The three took those opportunities to ask the locals if they had any leads where Jen was concerned, but thus far, none of them did.

They seemed less unnerved by his presence than the Virc had, at least. Considerably less unnerved, in fact. Only one of them actually had any noticeable adverse reaction to Grosh’s presence: a joltik who took refuge in a nearby trash can.

“You don’t think…?” Grosh began, letting the question hang.

“No, I don’t.” Odds were the poor little bug really was just terrified of the relatively gigantic creature who’d just shown up on the scene.

<I will check regardless. The joltik may still know something valuable.> Oth waited for an opening, then drifted across the street to speak with the frightened bug. Solonn saw tiny blue eyes and a bit of yellow fuzz poke out from under the lid after a few moments. Shortly after that, Oth returned.

<The joltik has seen no one of your kind prior to our arrival, nor does she know anything about a shiny gardevoir,> they reported.

Whether they realize they do or not. Oth hadn’t found any signs of tampering in anyone they’d questioned thus far. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. In fact, the more Solonn thought about it, the more certain he was that if they did find someone who knew anything, that fact would only come to light after digging through a pile of implanted memories.

With one last glance back at the trash can—the joltik was finally emerging, and noisily at that—Solonn carried on, as did the others. Fewer people than he would’ve preferred crossed their path as they continued their search, but it was a large enough sample that at least one of them should’ve been able to help out. So he figured, at least, as he finally signaled to the others, with no small measure of disappointment, that it was time to call it a night. The streets were only growing emptier by the hour. There was little else to do for now.

As they slowly neared the meeting place, the fact that they had nothing to report was plain before any of them even said a word. The same was true of the other two teams already waiting there for them.

“No luck, huh,” Moriel surmised aloud.

“None,” Solonn confirmed.

“If it’s any consolation, we didn’t have any, either,” Alij said. Then he grimaced a little. “What am I saying; of course that’s no consolation.”

Solonn met her gaze, trying to show at least some comfort at her words. “Thank you,” he said, and managed a weak smile. She had a point, really. The search had only just begun. They still had a chance.

“Hey!” a familiar voice called out from somewhere behind the party. It was Evane, and her sister wasn’t the only one at her side. A sceptile was jogging alongside them, looking slightly winded but still managing a strange, placid smile.

“You found someone,” Solonn said, eyes wide. So he hoped, anyway. There was still one last thing that needed doing to confirm it.

“We did,” Viraya said. “This is Sylvan. She works at a place called the Hope Institute… and according to her, Jen is a frequent visitor.”

The sceptile nodded. “He hasn’t missed a meeting in weeks,” she said, sounding a bit breathless.

Solonn had never heard of the place in his life. It must’ve come up at some point after the Extinction, he figured. “If Jen goes there regularly…”

“We’d do well to hang around the place,” Grosh said, sounding more than a little eager.

That eagerness proved infectious; a tentative sort of smile made it to Solonn’s eyes. “Yes. Yes we should.”

“But first things first,” Moriel said, and she glanced meaningfully at Oth.

Oth parted from the rest of their team and moved toward Sylvan. <There may be a psychic pokémon interfering with our search,> they told her. <I will need to check your mind to ensure he has not interfered with you.>

“You certainly may,” Sylvan said, with a dismissive wave of her hand and no signs of trepidation on her face. “I’ve nothing to hide.”

Oth got to work with no further delay. Before long, their eyes opened and they moved back. <Her memories and perception have not been altered,> they assured the others, <and her words have been truthful.>

Hope welled up inside Solonn. “I think we have our lead, then.”

“I think so.” Moriel turned to face Sylvan. “Would you mind if we went back to your… institute with you? We want to check it out for ourselves.”

“And we want to be there when Jen shows up again,” Grosh added.

Sylvan clasped her hands together and smiled warmly. “I would be delighted to have you around. Our president would be more delighted still.”

Several icy brows rose at this. “Your president?” Solonn said. Who could that be? And why would he be so glad to have them in his institute?

The possibility that somehow, the gardevoir was involved with this place—that he might even be the ‘president’ Sylvan spoke of—reared its head, and Solonn felt a good measure of his hope turn to unease.

Oth, it seemed, was having similar thoughts. They rattled inscrutably to themself for a moment, half their eyes closed. <We wish to learn more about your president,> they said. No one contradicted them.

The sceptile nodded toward the claydol. “Very well. You were bound to discover the truth eventually.”

Now what did that mean? Solonn eyed her warily as Oth initiated another scan. The sceptile was being incredibly complacent about all this, even moreso than anyone else they’d encountered. Was she leading them into a trap?

Oth jerked back suddenly, all of their eyes snapping open. They made a sound that would have probably come out as a gasp if they actually breathed.

“What is it?” Solonn asked, concerned.

<It… it is not possible… and yet…>

“What isn’t possible?” Alij asked.

Moments passed before Oth could pull words together. <Her memories tell that the president… is human,> they said, and were instantly met with incredulous and skeptical looks and astonished gasps. <Nothing at all within her mind contradicts it.>

No one responded to that right away. No one could. “That can’t be possible…” Evane finally said, nearly whispering.

“But it is,” Sylvan assured her. “And it’s the reason why he needs you. There are some who would do anything in their power to purge the last remnants of humanity from the world. He will ask you to guard him and his beloved institute.”

The glalie all exchanged looks. Disbelief was still plain on many of their faces.

<We would do well to investigate,> Oth said. Whether or not they kept that message from Sylvan, Solonn couldn’t tell.

At any rate… he had to agree with them. Whether or not there really was an actual, live human at the Hope Institute, the fact remained that Jen frequented the place. This was the sort of opportunity they needed. Especially if the president hadn’t always been human.

Solonn shuddered hard, hoping with all his heart that they weren’t dealing with someone who could forcibly change a person’s form. Gods knew he didn’t want to go through that again. And he wanted Jen to go through it far, far less. “We’d like to speak with the president,” he said, his voice cracking a bit mid-sentence. He swallowed, trying to relieve his dry throat. “Can you take us there now?”

Sylvan nodded again. “Of course. Right this way…” she said, then turned back from whence she’d come. Evane and Viraya flanked her as she left, and the rest moved to follow with next to no delay.

As they followed the sceptile through the streets of Convergence, Solonn couldn’t help but look around to see what else about the city had changed from what he’d known. The answer, as far as he could tell, was nothing at all, apart from the reduced traffic and lack of human presence.

“Oh, wow… Have a look at that.”

No sooner were Moriel’s words out of her mouth than Solonn saw exactly what she was talking about. In the middle of the plaza they were now crossing, a rather large bronze sculpture stood conspicuously, shining in a way that told that it hadn’t been there long. Certainly not before the Extinction.

Solonn knew for a fact that he’d never commissioned a statue of his human self, alongside one of Jal’tai’s mirage and another of a porygon2, during his time as mayor.

He looked away from the sculpture, feeling oddly self-conscious of a sudden, and tried to fix his sights on the path ahead, with no real success. His eyes, or at least his wishful thinking, kept catching glances of suspiciously-sized, conical shapes here and there. He couldn’t help but shoot them second glances. But most of them revealed nothing, and the only exception had nothing but a pylon to show him.

Just as Solonn was beginning to wonder when they’d arrive at the institute, another unfamiliar sight came into his vision: a sprawling, single-story building that frankly looked as though it had seen better days. As they drew closer, he could make out the writing on the crude sign plastered above its large, metal doors; “HOPE”, it read, in hand-painted unown-script.

Is this really the right place? Solonn couldn’t help but wonder, only to feel his doubts weaken just as soon as they’d come up. Of course their president would be conducting his work in the most unassuming place he could, if there truly were people who’d object so strongly to him. Of course he wouldn’t want to draw too much attention—whether he was truly human or not.

Sylvan rapped on the door a few times; seconds later, they slid open, pulled aside by a hitmonlee waiting within. “It’s them,” the sceptile told him. “They’ve come to meet with the president.”

The hitmonlee sized them all up, his eyes finally traveling up the length of Grosh’s neck. He whistled, though how was anyone’s guess. “That’s some crew.”

“Yes,” Sylvan agreed, nearly grinning. “He’s sure to welcome them.” She turned to face the visitors once more. “Come, right this way,” she said, and motioned for them to follow her into the hall beyond.

The path they took was long, much moreso than Solonn had anticipated. The building was even larger than it appeared on the outside, it seemed, and its internal layout gave him the impression of something designed to confound intruders.

Eventually, “And here we are,” Sylvan said as she stopped before a pair of doors. At her words, they opened of their own accord. Beyond them was a sizable lounge, at the far end of which was an armchair presently facing the wall.

There was a click, and a number of tiny, red lights came to life on a number of devices encircling the perimeter from above. Cameras, from the looks of them—or turrets, the thought occurred to Solonn, at which his unease and suspicion spiked.

It seemed he wasn’t the only one to take it that way; “Mind explaining why you’ve got guns turned on us as soon as we show up?” Grosh growled from the hallway outside.

“They’re not guns,” came a voice from the general direction of the chair—a voice speaking a glalie-language, Solonn realized, and the alarm bells went off inside his head once more.

“They’re cameras, and they’re only gonna be a problem for you if it turns out you’re actually a pack of terrorists bent on keeping our world human-free,” the voice went on. “I trust that’s not the case?”

<That is correct,> Oth assured him.

“And I trust your agent has been honest about what you are?” Solonn countered, trying to sound composed despite his growing fear. He didn’t quite pull it off.

The person in the chair gave a laugh. “‘Agent’? Sylvan’s just a greeter. I just didn’t happen to have anyone else on hand at the moment other than Cain and Skrekt, and those two have their hands full around here.”

“Anyway…” Here the speaker turned the chair around with an audible effort. “Whew… I really need to see about getting a better chair. Anyway, Skrekt told me you’ve got a claydol with you… and yep, that’s a claydol, all right. They can check me out if you still need proof I’m on the level. Just try not to go poking around in my dreams, all right? Some of those are kinda embarrassing,” he said with a self-conscious little laugh.

Solonn just stared at him and kept staring, his jaws parted, his eyes very wide. Yes, he still needed proof that this man was as he seemed. Moreso than ever, now, with what looked for all the world like a human face, a human being, standing before him: a person with chin-length, reddish-brown hair and wide, bright brown eyes that almost made him look eager.

Almost. There was something a little off about the man’s expression, as if he weren’t accustomed to making that face.

Wordlessly, soundlessly, Oth moved toward the impossible creature. The human—if indeed that was what he was—sat back down, giving the claydol the go-ahead by way of a thumbs-up. Seconds of silence passed, followed by a faint and distinctly awed-sounding utterance from Oth as they drifted slowly backward from their subject.

<Sylvan was right…> they confirmed, and their mindvoice sounded every bit as amazed as their true voice. <He is human. He has always been human.>

“Sylvan’s not really the lying type,” the human said. “and neither am I. At least not where friends are concerned. Or potential friends.”

Solonn relaxed visibly, letting out a breath he’d been unwittingly holding. At the same time, part of him wondered what had compelled Oth to make certain the president had never been anything else. Even after all this time, Solonn still hadn’t told them about what had been done to him in Convergence, about the body he’d been forced to wear for nearly half a decade. After all these years, he still hadn’t felt like talking about it. He’d barely wanted to think about it, though of course he’d done so regardless.

They might’ve suspected that he was wearing a mirage of some kind, the thought occurred to him. Or that he was a ditto. Though the latter seemed unlikely, if memory served him with regards to what he’d learned about ditto during his own time as a human. Apparently ditto could only maintain a perfect disguise in the presence of the person they were copying. The president probably hadn’t seen another human being in a long time.

Probably. Solonn shook his head, trying not to get caught on that question. Maybe other humans had survived. He couldn’t know for sure yet. But thanks to Oth, he could at least trust that there was one such survivor here—one who hadn’t been forced into that form.

The president stood once more and offered his hand to the claydol, who floated nearly stationary in place for a couple of moments before letting one of their own hands float free for him to shake. “The name’s Sylvester DeLeo,” he said, “and I’d like to think we’re gonna be real good friends from here on out.”

“I think we’d all like that,” Moriel said, “but… well, I think I speak for everyone here when I ask: how? How the hell are you still alive?”

DeLeo shrugged. “Don’t know. That’s part of what we’re here to find out. If whatever killed off the rest of humanity is still out there, it won’t do us any good to bring ’em back if we can’t provide them with some kind of immunity. We think I’m the key to that, some way or another. We just haven’t figured out how yet.”

For a short time, all Solonn could do was sit there and digest what he’d been told. It was almost too much to make sense of at once. But Oth’s vision had never steered them wrong before. What they saw was certainly true…

But wait. Wait. The rest of what DeLeo had said finally clicked properly, and if Solonn weren’t already goggling at him, this would’ve done it.

“When you say ’bring them back’… what do you mean by that, exactly?” he asked tentatively.

DeLeo gave a strange, sort of wistful smile. “Do you believe in the afterlife?” he asked.

Solonn felt his heart skip a beat. He can’t be suggesting what it sounds like. It’s not possible… “…I do, yes…” he finally responded.

“Well, that makes two of us, and then some.” His smile grew both wider and shakier. “We’re not just trying to whip up a fresh new batch of humans. We want to bring back the old ones, too. After all… don’t they deserve another chance?” He swallowed audibly. “I think they do,” he said, softly but resolutely.

A heavy silence hung over the room and the hall outside for several moments. “…So do I,” Grosh said, his bottomless voice cracking like split stone. “I’d be honored to help protect you and your mission.”

Solonn finally pulled his gaze away from DeLeo to look up at his father. Tears were already shimmering in those red eyes, ready to fall at any moment, and Solonn got the immediate, heart-wrenching impression that Grosh hadn’t had humans in mind when he’d voiced his support—and he immediately sympathized with the steelix.

It was very, very difficult to believe that anyone could raise the dead. But gods knew Solonn wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe, difficult as it was, that he’d be able to tell Jen that yes, he’d see his parents again someday.

“So would I,” Evane spoke up. Her tone was hard to read. Her sister nodded at her side. Gradually, the rest of the party gathered their wits again and voiced or otherwise showed their own agreement, Solonn included.

DeLeo’s cause was almost certainly hopeless. But defending it would get them close to Jen, at least.

DeLeo took a deep breath, his eyes glued to the floor for a moment. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said as he lifted them again. “You’re not just gonna be guarding this building, you know. You’re not just guarding me, either. You’re gonna be guarding the future of humanity. The future that should’ve been. Thank you,” he said earnestly. “From the bottom of my heart.”

“Thank you, as well,” Solonn felt obliged to return. Gods, if there’s any chance at all this could work… All the faces that he, and Grosh, and Jen, and who knew how many people might see again swam before his mind’s eye, making the light in his own eyes flicker.

He tried, but failed, to shake them out. Don’t get your hopes up, he warned himself, feeling a knot build in his throat as he spoke silently. Not all of them.

“So… when do we start?” Alij asked.

“When do you start? Right now, if you’re ready. Of course… we do have some very sensitive research material here. Including but not limited to yours truly. What that means is I have to stay here twenty-four-seven. And as my guards, well… so will you, for the most part. Are you up to that? Got anyone you wanna spend a little quality time with before you move in?”

Solonn averted his gaze awkwardly. Most of the living people he’d want to touch base with were so far removed from his life at this point that they’d just miss him more if he suddenly showed up on their doorstep only to promptly leave. The rest were either right there in the room with him or could be reached via Oth and Quiul. “I don’t,” he said.

“None of us do, unless I’m mistaken,” Evane said, and no one argued with her.

“So I take it that’s a ‘yes’, then,” DeLeo said, at which he was met with a wave of affirmative responses. “All right, then. I’ve got a few rooms that, combined, ought to be able to hold you all. Yes, even you,” he said, pointing to Grosh. “And don’t worry: I’ll keep the AC running for you,” he added with a wink. “Sylvan, if you could show them to their rooms, please?”

“Of course,” the sceptile said, then began to turn back toward the corridor behind them.

“Wait,” Viraya spoke up before anyone else could follow her. “One more question.”

DeLeo spread his arms wide. “Shoot,” he prompted.

“…How in the hell do you know our language?” she asked. “In all my time among humans, none of them could speak it. They couldn’t speak any pokémon language.”

“Even she couldn’t,” Evane said quietly, and her tone and eyelight told that a part of her had drifted elsewhere and elsewhen.

DeLeo gave another smile; this one seemed less sad and more proud. “I’ve got years and years of studying under my belt,” he answered. “I practically busted my brain trying to cram it all in. But it was worth it, in the end, to be able to talk to anybody I want. Or, well, almost anybody,” he added, and that smile turned slightly wistful again.

Solonn raised a brow at him but said nothing. Oth had proven that DeLeo wasn’t a transfigured pokémon. And it sounded as though the human had learned whichever pokémon languages he happened to know the hard way rather than by the Speech—if his words could be taken at face value. Solonn reckoned that if push came to shove, Oth could investigate things again. They could make sure DeLeo had never been in league with a certain latios or anyone else with similar ambitions.

For the time being, as Solonn finally followed Sylvan away with the rest of the party, he silently reminded himself to keep his own linguistic talents under wraps.

That's right: from here on out, this will update monthly rather than biweekly--even I think the latter was too darn often. So yeah, look for the next on the 1st/2nd of March.

The next after this one right here, I mean.

______________

Chapter 37 – Easy Come, Easy Go

Training for the job was remarkably light: just a tour of the place, really, with restricted areas pointed out so the new security staff would know where to keep the public from going.

Keeping them from entering about half of these areas were voice-activated doors, which only DeLeo could open. Or so he thought, of course. But Solonn had no intentions whatsoever of enlightening him, nor much of a need to sneak in. He knew what was behind those doors—they all did. DeLeo had shown them, with assurances that all of the unfamiliar equipment therein would help bring about the revival of humankind in some way or another.

Said equipment included a holding cell of some kind: a large, round platform that turned into a transparent, glowing tube when activated. “For detaining troublemakers,” DeLeo had explained. Which, Solonn had supposed, was a sufficiently digestible answer. But something about the cell still made him uneasy, and it didn’t take him long to figure out what.

Solonn had his own memories of a holding pen made of energy. A time when he’d been judged a “troublemaker” himself, to put it very mildly.

He hoped DeLeo had a milder punishment for anyone who landed themself in that tube than the pokémon center back in Lilycove had intended for him.

As the first assembly he’d be working at approached, thoughts of his personal mission began crowding out all others; he all but forgot all about DeLeo’s cell. When that evening finally arrived, the possibility of an imminent reunion intruded upon his thoughts to the point where he vaguely wondered if he might forget to do his job.

Said job would have him watching the youth assembly, keeping an eye out for people who didn’t belong there. He was to escort any such people to the adult assembly, or to DeLeo’s feet in an unconscious heap if necessary. He was also charged with informing Cain about the hitmonlee’s own tasks for the evening.

To that end, he headed toward the room set aside for the youth assembly, rounding the corner that would take him backstage. The space beyond the curtain was quiet, for now. At any moment, the children would start filing in.

And he could very well be among them.

Solonn shook himself back into the present with an effort. He soon found Cain with one hand holding a cup of something orange and the other flipping through a stack of papers. The hitmonlee put both down when he noticed the large shadow looming over him from behind.

In the blink of an eye, Cain turned on his heel to face Solonn. His eyes were wide, but whether or not he was actually startled was hard to tell. “Shouldn’t sneak up on people,” he said. “Just because no one here would split your skull for it doesn’t mean the same’s true everywhere else.”

“Noted,” Solonn said, wincing a bit. “Sorry about that.” He glanced at the papers on the table—from the looks of them, at least some of them detailed tonight’s lesson plan for the kids. Does he already know?

Just in case he didn’t, “I take it you’ve already gathered that you’ll be addressing the crowd tonight,” Solonn said, nodding toward the curtain.

“Yeah, that hasn’t been news since this morning.” Cain reached back to retrieve the cup, then drank from it. Or appeared to, anyway. He held it more or less where Solonn would expect a mouth to be, and it certainly sounded like he was taking a sip, but as far as Solonn could see, there was no mouth there.

Solonn had yet to raise any questions about that, and wasn’t about to start now; both he and the hitmonlee had better things to do. “Were you aware that you’ll be doing so alone?”

Cain lowered his cup once more. “…No. No I was not.” He ran a hand back over his head with a faint rustling of short fur. “So are we skipping the puppets tonight, or…?”

“As far as I’m aware, no.”

Cain sighed, but not heavily. “I’m never gonna be free of ’em, am I.”

“Can’t say. But I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Solonn assured him.

And not a moment too soon. The doors beyond the curtain opened audibly, and chattering voices could be heard alongside footsteps and flapping wings and slithering bodies. Automatically, Solonn peeked out into the audience, hardly daring to breathe as he scanned the small crowd of pokémon for snorunt.

Five such scans later, Solonn got the sinking feeling that Jen wasn’t going to be showing up tonight after all. Disappointed, he slipped back behind the curtains and slunk off to the side of the stage, concerned that maybe Jen was home sick.

He saw Cain step out onto the stage, the stack of papers now clipped to a board under his arm. Seconds later, the hitmonlee leaned back through the curtains, gesturing for Solonn to join him. Nudging his way out past the side of the curtain, he glided over toward where the hitmonlee stood looking over his papers again.

“Yes?” Solonn called out to him from a couple of yards away to avoid sneaking up on him this time.

Cain tore his eyes from the page. “Closer,” he said, half-whispering. “Don’t need them hearing.” He threw a glance into the audience.

Solonn complied, wondering what Cain would want to keep a secret from the kids. Part of him began to mildly dread an awkward discussion. Can’t that sort of thing wait?

“Okay,” Cain said in the quietest voice he could muster, “okay.” After casting another furtive glance into the audience, “…Do you think I could get away with cutting the puppets from the program?”

That… was not what Solonn was expecting. “Er… that depends on who you’re trying to sneak the changes past. Is it Mr. DeLeo or them?”

Solonn looked at the crowd himself on those words—and then all but forgot what he was talking about. There, toward the doors, a snorunt and a wobbuffet were making their way further into the room. And even at this distance, Solonn was sure he recognized that snorunt.

“It’s him,” he whispered, eyes bright with joy and relief.

“Uh… were you listening there, buddy? I said it was the kids I was asking about. But…” Cain sighed again. “It really probably isn’t such a good idea to just spring that on them. ‘Hey kids, no more puppet pals!’ Yeah, that’d go over real smoothly…”

Cain, it seemed, had made up his mind. Good. “If that’s all you needed, I’ve got something else that needs my tending.” Though not the something he’d prefer. Not yet, anyway. He still had a job to do, and he imagined it was in his best interests to do it well… just in case. Much as he hated to consider it, there was a chance, however slim, that he was wrong about that snorunt’s identity. And even if he wasn’t, there was no guarantee he’d really get a chance to rescue him tonight. He didn’t want to lose his job here, not when it made it that much easier to keep track of his brother.

Not when there was a chance, however small and distant, that DeLeo’s vision could become a reality.

Solonn descended into the crowd, which gave him a wide berth as he approached. He came to a stop before the snorunt and wobbuffet—before Jen. Something hitched in his chest. There was no doubt about it at this point.

“Blessings,” he said. The greeting nearly slipped his mind; it hadn’t become habitual yet. Not to mention he was more than a little preoccupied at the moment.

“Blessings,” Jen and the wobbuffet returned in unison. It sounded rather more automatic coming from the former. How long has he been coming here…?

With an immense effort, Solonn turned his attention more toward the wobbuffet. “Pardon me,” he said, “but could you come with me, please?”

“…What for?” The wobbuffet had worn an apprehensive look ever since their eyes had first met, but now he looked and sounded legitimately frightened. He was even shivering as he stood there, and Solonn knew he was doing a perfectly fine job of keeping his chill to himself.

“I’m sorry, but this is the youth assembly. You’ll want our adult group.” Which was the truth, and one reason why Solonn wasn’t tending to Jen directly yet. The other was concern that his brother would react poorly to some of what he had to say, much as he had back at the Haven.

Though the fact that Jen wasn’t acting as though he were face to face with one of his kidnappers this time was… promising…

The wobbuffet nodded, with a wordless noise of acceptance. He was ready to go. Solonn… suddenly wasn’t so sure himself. Had Jen been cured? Had this place perhaps done what Adn couldn’t—or likelier wouldn’t do? Solonn turned back toward him, helpless to resist, momentarily paralyzed by indecision.

He snapped out of it. Not yet, he told himself, though with little force. There was no way to be certain that Jen’s bewitching was undone at this point. Or that Adn hadn’t simply replaced it with programming of another sort. He couldn’t risk making a scene. Let the crowd thin out first.

So he instructed himself, as he began leading the wobbuffet away at a rather faster clip than he’d meant to. But even then, he only hoped rather than knew that he was doing the right thing.

Solonn didn’t slow down as he proceeded through the corridors of the oddly labyrinthine building. He could hear the steady pattering of the other’s feet behind him, and no panting accompanied them. The wobbuffet was apparently keeping up just fine.

“Excuse me, uh, sir?”

Solonn slowed, though barely. Maybe the wobbuffet was having more trouble than he’d thought. “Hm?”

“What’s your name?”

Oh. Satisfied that he wasn’t leaving the wobbuffet in the dust after all, Solonn sped back up. “Solonn,” he answered, “and you?”

“I’m Esaax,” the wobbuffet responded.

“Ah, all right, then. Pleasure to meet you, Esaax.” And it was, really. It wasn’t Esaax’s fault that Solonn had left Jen behind for the time being.

All the same, Solonn was more than a little glad that he didn’t have much further to go before he could turn back.

“I’m afraid we’re already a little late,” he said, “but the good news is that I know a shortcut through the building that’ll keep you from missing too much more of the assembly. We’ll just go right around here, and—”

Solonn stopped halfway around the corner and midway through his sentence. The doors to his right had opened rather abruptly, catching him by surprise. When DeLeo stepped out through them, the surprise turned to a current of worry.

Don’t be nervous, he told himself. You’ve got no reason to be. After all, it wasn’t as if he were wandering aimlessly. He was doing his job.

Meanwhile, it seemed DeLeo was not, and in spite of himself, Solonn took open notice. “Sir… don’t you have a client to tend to at the moment?” From what he understood, DeLeo generally devoted meeting nights to one-on-one sessions with particularly troubled Hope attendees.

“He didn’t show,” DeLeo responded. “And I suspect he’s not gonna. He was doing an awful lot of sniffling last time. So I thought I’d take it easy and grab a bite to eat instead.”

It was then that he properly noticed Esaax. His eyes and smile widened. “Hey there! Haven’t seen you around here before!” He stooped slightly and offered his hand to the wobbuffet, who took it after a moment’s delay. “The name’s Sylvester DeLeo, and I’m the president and founder of this fine establishment. And you are…?”

“…Esaax,” the wobbuffet replied.

“Glad to make your acquaintance, Esaax,” DeLeo replied, still smiling. He certainly seemed happy to meet this person, Solonn thought. “Say… do you mind if I ask a quick question?”

The wobbuffet matter, it seemed, was now securely out of Solonn’s figurative hands. “If you’ll excuse me…” he said, though part of him had to wonder, as he departed, if DeLeo had actually heard him. There was definitely something about Esaax that was commanding the human’s interest. Hoping he was right in assuming he wasn’t needed there any longer, he swiftly made his way back to the youth assembly to check on Jen again.

Only to find that he wasn’t there.

Solonn tamped down the panic that threatened to arise. He’s probably just fine. He probably just went to the restroom. He’ll be back any minute.

But countless minutes passed, and he sat there with Cain’s puppet act and the audience’s participation in it going on at the very edge of his attention until, to his dismay and discomfort, the hitmonlee announced the end of the meeting. Another scan of the crowd confirmed the bad news: Jen still hadn’t returned.

Solonn’s heart sank. Suspicions that Jen hadn’t been cured of his bewitchment after all returned, stronger than ever. The snorunt might well have been concealing his fear, or at least most of it, acting unaware of the “threat” he faced until he had an opportunity to escape. And escape he had, apparently.

With a sigh, Solonn picked his way through the departing crowd, heading backstage once more.

“Hey, how’d I do?” Cain asked him as he passed. Solonn didn’t stop, though, already too keen on doing a sweep of the building just in case Jen hadn’t completely left the scene. “Come on, man, wait up!”

Might as well, Solonn finally figured, though in truth it wasn’t as if he were making any real effort to shake off the hitmonlee behind him. Nor was Cain having any real trouble catching up; he’d be at Solonn’s side for sure at this point, were there room. Solonn barely needed or bothered to cut his speed at all.

On the chance that Cain might’ve seen Jen leave, and might at least be able to tell him when it happened, “Did you happen to notice when the snorunt left?” Solonn asked.

“Yeah, I did; it was just a little after you left,” Cain said. “Around the time I brought ol’ Billie and Barry out. Hence why I was… kinda worried they left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, heh. What did you think?” he asked again. “Was keeping the puppets in a bad idea after all?”

“I… wasn’t really paying much attention to the show,” Solonn admitted. “I had a lot on my mind. And still do.”

Solonn had nothing to say to that, really. The hitmonlee’s puppets and weariness of them weren’t exactly top priority at the moment. Keeping an eye out for yellow shells and glowing eyes was.

“Say, that kid you’re asking about… That wouldn’t happen to be the one what’s-her-face mentioned to Sylvan, would it? Now why the heck can’t I remember her name,” Cain mused aloud. “Elaine or some such, wasn’t it?”

“Evane.” At least Solonn thought that’s who he was talking about. “And… yes. That’s exactly who that snorunt was.”

“Ah, okay. No wonder you were distracted.” Cain sounded rather disappointed to have come to this conclusion. “Well, if it’s any comfort, he shows up every week, without fail. You’ll have another shot at your little family reunion sooner or later.”

“I hope so.” But the hope was rather dimmer now, and grew moreso as his search continued to yield nothing.

Maybe he was wrong about why Jen had left, he conceded. But from what he could see, the evidence told another story. And if he was right, the snorunt would likely book it the first chance he got next week, too.

One of the others needs to talk to him first, he determined. Jen might never have seen any of the Sinaji defectors before. And if he had, and was still bewitched, odds weren’t bad that he saw them as the good guys.

Best to arrange for this now, he decided, and went off in search of DeLeo.

He found the human in much the same way as he’d found him last time: a door opened right next to him, and DeLeo very nearly bumped right into him on the way out.

“Oh, I heard you coming,” Solonn assured him. Then it was his turn to feel a little embarrassed. “Maybe I should warn you.”

“Ah, it’s fine. We didn’t crash; that’s what matters, right? Oh hey!” He clapped his hands together abruptly. “Just thought of something. I’m gonna take the opportunity to chill in my study for a little while. Why don’t you join me? You and all your buddies. I know I’ve told you quite a bit about me and my institute, but I wouldn’t mind getting to know you guys a little better, you know?”

Uncertainty briefly flickered in Solonn’s eyes; he knew there were a fair few things about himself that he’d rather the human didn’t know. And given the other glalie’s former affiliation, he doubted they’d want to go into too much detail, either.

But, ultimately, what they shared or didn’t was up to them. “I’ll go see if they’re interested. But… first, if it’s all right, there’s something I’d like to ask of you,” Solonn said.

“It’s as all right as all right can be. What do you need?”

“A reassignment. Some position where I’m… less likely to be seen. I think I frightened one of your young attendees away earlier.” It wasn’t the best feeling, admitting a thing like that. Put mildly. “At the very least, it might be a good idea to assign me to the adult assembly instead.”

“Hmm… yeah, I suppose you’ve got a point there. See, I’d thought the kids’d be safer with the likes of you around. Anyone there who wasn’t supposed to be would’ve taken one look at you and said ‘nope, I’m outta here’. Now, I figured sending the steelix in there would’ve probably resulted in some puddles to mop up, but you…” He shrugged. “Guess I underestimated how scary you were. No offense, of course.”

There wasn’t offense, but there was something a lot like guilt. It wasn’t your fault, he reminded himself. He never feared you before they got a hold of him.

“So… will I be reassigned, then?”

DeLeo nodded. “Consider it done. You’ll be on patrol next week. Sound good?”

“Yes,” Solonn responded, with one unspoken caveat: Provided I can slip out of sight if he wanders…

“All right. Guess I’ll be seeing you later, then?”

“I suppose,” Solonn said, then left to meet up with the others.

He ran into Moriel first. Before he could say a word, “Did you see him?” she asked.

Solonn sighed. “Yes, but only briefly. He fled as soon as my back was turned. It seems he still thinks I’m one of his abductors.”

The light in Moriel’s eyes dampened. “I’m so sorry.”

Solonn shook his head. “Don’t be. You didn’t bewitch him. And you’re not the one who sent someone he was likely to distrust into the room with him.”

“I should have thought of it.” He sighed again. “I was just… too excited to see him, I guess.”

“I think I would be, too, if it were my family on the line.” Moriel began to turn at this point. “Do you want to talk about it with the others, maybe? Or at least with your dad?”

“I do, but…” This seemed as good a time as any to bring up DeLeo’s proposal. “Do you suppose they’d be interested in doing so with DeLeo in his study? He offered to share his downtime with us. Apparently he wants to get to know us a little better.”

“…How much better?” Moriel asked. She sounded slightly apprehensive.

“I don’t know, but he gave us a choice in the matter. We don’t have to go if we don’t want to. And presumably—hopefully—we don’t have to tell him anything we’d rather not if we do go.”

Moriel mulled it over in silence for a moment. “Okay,” she finally agreed. “Maybe we’ll get a little extra information about him and his mission while we’re at it. It might give us a better idea of whether he actually knows what he’s talking about.”

She set off then, and Solonn followed her. They located the rest of their party in clusters who were chatting amongst themselves when Moriel and Solonn found them. While Evane showed similar misgivings to Moriel’s at first, ultimately she and all the rest decided that yes, they’d be joining DeLeo later in the evening.

When the time came, the five glalie and the claydol filed in, forming a near-circle around DeLeo where he sat waiting for them in his chair. Said chair had been moved forward a bit to allow them to nearly surround him rather than having to bunch up in front of him, presumably to allow him to make eye contact with any one of them just as easily as with any other.

Grosh, meanwhile, lingered in the hallway with his head hanging over the threshold. There was just no fitting any more of him than that in the room beyond, not unless everyone else traded places with him.

“Glad you could all make it,” DeLeo said once everyone was settled. “Sorry we haven’t had a chance to just shoot the breeze before now. Last couple of days have been pretty hectic on my end.

“But enough about me! You guys have the floor this time.”

There was a moment of awkward silence; then, “So… what do you want to know?” Moriel asked.

“Oh, lots of things! Where you come from, just for starters. I’m guessing you’re not from the same place, originally speaking, right?”

<We are not,> Oth confirmed. <They are all from Shoal Cave. Grosh and I have our own separate origins, and we met these glalie separately.>

DeLeo nodded, absorbing that. “Now, of course, I’ve gotta wonder about the circumstances involved. You know, seeing as Shoal Cave is an island and all, and I don’t take either of you ground-types for swimmers. I’m guessing humans had something to do with your meeting up. Am I right?”

“…To a degree,” Grosh answered from the doorway. “They weren’t the only ones who had anything to do with it, but..” He rumbled to himself in apparent discomfort; a restless rotating of some of his segments could be heard over it.

“…I appreciate that,” Grosh said, relaxing his posture a bit. Solonn couldn’t blame him for not wanting to continue, given the direction the conversation seemed to be taking.

“I will remind you, though: if it’s talking about the humans that’s hard for you… that might not be the case forever,” DeLeo said.

“You say that, but—” Viraya broke off. A growing, approaching noise had caught her attention as well as everyone else’s—it sounded like a car headed their way. That noise abated almost as soon as it had arisen, only to be replaced by plodding footsteps, followed by a loud, hollow roar and the sound of something crumbling just outside the room.

In an instant, the room filled with deep blue light, and DeLeo dove for cover in the space between the now-shielded bodies surrounding him. Solonn moved back, tightening the circle as the rest of the glalie did likewise and Oth joined DeLeo behind them.

The wall before them blackened and began to disintegrate, as if it were rotting. A huge, gangly, blue creature stepped through it, head slung low, with sharp teeth bared and an arm outstretched—

—for about a second and a half. Then a crack rang out, and down the intruder went. Solonn stared down at him, trying to make sense of the pokémon who now lay sprawled out and unconscious before them. The thing had four very long legs; he must have stood at least eight feet tall. He had a long neck and tail, too, the latter of which was jet black from end to end. Solonn had never seen such a creature before, neither in person nor during any of Exeter’s lessons.

But he knew what the pokémon reminded him of. That sort of creature… that, he’d seen within the past few hours.

Was this a coincidence?

He felt Oth move up and out of the ring through the air. In nearly the same instant, he heard DeLeo getting back up to his feet.

The human let out a sigh. “You could’ve just knocked, Esaax.”

Solonn felt something inside him go deathly cold, even by his standards.

No. This was no coincidence.

“…Okay, what the hell was that? What just happened?” Alij demanded. He broke from the ring to circle the insensible pokémon, clearly trying to make sense of him.

“That right there? That’s a kwazai,” DeLeo said, “and an unsatisfied customer, so to speak. But I’m gonna see what I can do about the latter. Grosh?”

“Yes?” The steelix’s eyes pulled away from the kwazai and locked onto DeLeo’s with a bit of an effort.

“Come with me. You and… oh, you.” He pointed at Solonn. “I’m gonna need you to help get this guy to the tube. Can’t carry him myself, and I don’t wanna leave him out of there. And neither do you. These things pack a punch.”

Solonn didn’t doubt that, not after seeing what the intruder—the same person he’d spoken to mere hours before, who’d seemed utterly harmless then—had done to the walls. Not after seeing those teeth—they paled in comparison to his own, of course, but he still knew the teeth of a predator when he saw them.

He nudged Esaax closer to Grosh using a small, rolling wave of ice. The steelix carefully scooped the kwazai up in his jaws and dragged him out into the hallway and out of sight. Solonn and DeLeo left the room behind him.

Once there was enough room to do so, Grosh craned his neck backward and draped Esaax over his back, slowing his pace further as he carried on from there to reduce the risk of catching the kwazai’s long limbs and tail underneath himself.

To that end, “Father? Would you mind if I used some ice to secure him to you?”

“Not in the least,” Grosh said. “That’ll give me one less thing to think about.”

Solonn went to it straight away, pinning the gangly limbs to the steelix’s sides with shackles of ice.

“…Did you say ’father’?” DeLeo asked him once that was done.

“Yes…”

“Wow.” DeLeo shook his head a little, his eyes wide. “Guess I really do have a lot to learn about you guys.”

Grosh made an inscrutable noise at that, but no one else had anything to say until they closed the remaining distance to the room with the holding chamber. They stopped before the doors; then, “This is Sylvester DeLeo, requesting entry,” DeLeo said.

Solonn had raised an eyebrow at DeLeo in an unspoken really? every other time he’d presented the password, and this time was no different. “Sir… may I make a suggestion?” he asked as the doors parted.

“Sure thing.”

“You… might want to consider something harder to guess. For the password, I mean.”

“He’s got a point there,” Grosh put in as he slithered into the room beyond with the kwazai still affixed to his back.

“But see, that’s the beauty of it,” DeLeo countered. “Someone trying to bust in would assume I’d know better. The answer’s hidden in plain sight. Besides, the system only responds to my voice anyway, so.”

“If you insist…” Solonn couldn’t say he had much confidence in DeLeo’s reasoning where the password was concerned, but let the matter drop for now. There were plenty of other things vying for his attention, and they had no real trouble wresting it from the previous topic.

“All right, get him on the pad,” DeLeo said, then crossed the room to a terminal awaiting him against the wall. “Make sure none of him’s spilling out or else the field won’t activate.”

Solonn sublimated the ice restraints. Apart from automatically sprawling out over the steel surface beneath him, Esaax didn’t make a move; he was still down for the count. Grosh carefully brought him over to the pad, rolling over to tip him over onto it, then pushed the head, limbs, and tail onto it with his snout.

With the click of a button, the terminal’s control board lit up in an array of colors. DeLeo’s hands danced over the keys, faster than Solonn had ever seen anyone type before, and with a steady hum, a column of light flickered into being, trapping Esaax between the two pads.

“All right,” DeLeo said, “all right.” He sounded short of breath, and his fingers began drumming against the plastic wrist guard as he spoke. “Grosh: I want you to go back and guard that hole in the wall. Tell the others back there to split up and start patrolling in case anybody else decides they can’t wait til business hours to have a word with me. Got it?”

“I got it,” Grosh said, then slithered away noisily.

DeLeo watched him leave; then, “You stay here, okay?” he said to Solonn. “Just in case we need to knock him back out in a hurry.”

“All right,” Solonn said, watching the kwazai who still lay folded in a heap on the chamber’s floor. He doubted Esaax would be getting back up anytime soon, but he put a sheer cold on standby anyway, ready to unleash it at a moment’s notice. He didn’t know what Esaax was capable of now, neither with regards to his techniques nor his temperament. Evolution could do strange and sometimes terrible things to people’s minds.

So he considered, and he hoped that was the only motive behind the kwazai’s violent break-in. Hopefully Esaax didn’t have a bone to pick with DeLeo or his cause after all.

Hopefully DeLeo didn’t have it coming.

“You know… given his current state, I am kinda glad he didn’t wait til we opened back up to drop by,” DeLeo said. “We need to have a talk, him and me. He probably had a lot racing through his brain when he busted in. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t in the same boat.”

The human’s fingers went still, only to flutter back into motion to punch in a few more keystrokes. There was a whirring sound that pulled Solonn’s attention up toward the ceiling—and what he saw there made his thoughts freeze in his head.

A compartment under the chamber’s lid had slid open. A long, spindly, robotic arm was emerging from within.

In his mind’s eye, Solonn could see an identical pair descending toward him, and he remembered the utter helplessness he’d felt when he’d seen them coming down.

He almost didn’t hear the footsteps passing him on the way to the glowing tube, still fixated on the robotic arm as it lowered a revive crystal toward the insensible figure below. Once DeLeo crossed into his field of vision, he automatically tore his gaze from the device and moved to join him in front of the kwazai, just for the sake of reminding himself that he could move.

Before them, the kwazai finally stirred. He lifted his saurian head, groaning faintly. His long, eyed tail rose with it. Esaax looked up; the arm was retracting with another bout of whirring. Once it disappeared, he turned his attention to the people on the other side of the glowing barrier.

His reaction was immediate.

He rose to his full height alarmingly quickly, his eyes and tail locked onto DeLeo. With a snarl, he began snapping at the force field and clawing at it with his long, spidery fingers. The wall of light held, but flashed whenever he struck it. The flashes only got more frequent by the moment.

Then there was a hiss, one that didn’t come from the furious creature held prisoner before them. Within seconds, Esaax’s posture relaxed, his arms dropping to his sides. Soon after, he dropped to his knees.

He’d been gassed, Solonn realized. Something had been pumped into the tube to make the kwazai more docile.

But he still looked angry. Both his eyes and the eyelike organs encircling his tail remained firmly fixed upon the human face beyond his cell. He wasn’t smiling. Not even close.

“Shh… it’s all right, Esaax,” DeLeo said. “You’re exactly where you need to be right now. I’ll bet you’ve got a lot of questions about what’s happened to you, and I’ve got all the answers.”

He walked right up to the tube, stopping directly in front of it, and leaned against the glowing wall as if it were ordinary glass. It glowed all the brighter where he pressed against it. “You probably didn’t know you could evolve, did you?” DeLeo asked. “I know most wobbuffet don’t. So I’m gonna tell you a little story, Esaax. One that’ll explain why this has been kept from you—and why you shouldn’t be scared of it. No, you should be anything but scared…”

There was a distinct note of awed excitement in DeLeo’s voice. Not only did he apparently know more than he’d let on about Esaax’s kind—he seemed legitimately happy about what had befallen the former wobbuffet.

Why, Solonn wondered, should DeLeo care so much?

DeLeo took a step back from the containment field and clasped his hands in front of himself. “There’s a legend,” he began, “hundreds of years old, about a king of the Mordial region named Asotura. His reign was glorious but short—he was killed by an assassin who was never found.

“The king’s body was discovered by his most faithful pokémon friend. And that friend was a kwazai, Esaax. Just like you are.

“Anyway, according to the legend, this kwazai refused to let the king be taken from him, and so he called on his ‘ultimate inner power’—and actually raised Asotura from the dead.”

Solonn’s eyes went wide. So… that was why DeLeo was so happy about a kwazai breaking into his building.

Maybe a little too happy.

Maybe a little too prepared.

Solonn’s heart sank, his throat going dry. No…

“Now, that was the good news for the king. The bad news was that the people decided they didn’t want his reign to continue. They didn’t exactly like the tale of Asotura’s resurrection, you see. They called it unnatural, and they called him an abomination.

“And the kwazai became demons in their eyes. The ancient Mordialans decided to just slaughter every kwazai they could find. And they did the same thing to wobbuffet and wynaut, too, in order to make sure the kwazai were exterminated completely. Asotura’s own army even sided with the public. They went against the king’s orders to put an end to the killing and instead joined in the effort to eradicate your species. Doesn’t it just make you sick?”

Whether it did or didn’t was impossible to tell. Esaax neither said nor did anything in response. He just kept staring.

“Well, anyway…” DeLeo resumed, “as for Asotura himself, there wasn’t anyone around who didn’t want him dead—and permanently this time. But when they stormed the castle, he wasn’t anywhere to be found. Nobody knows how he got away, but he did, and he also managed to rescue a handful of your kind along with himself.

“After he escaped from Mordial, he looked for a place where your people could continue to be protected for generations to come. Apparently one was provided right here in Hoenn by a legendary pokémon—nobody knows which one. Whoever they were, they gave their home to the refugees. Then they used their legendary powers to hide the refugees’ new sanctuary before taking off for who knows where. You might’ve heard of this sanctuary, Esaax. These days, it’s known as Mirage Island.

“Anyway, the people of Asotura’s former kingdom tried to keep his story and the secret of your people’s final evolutionary form from surviving the ages. But their efforts ultimately proved useless, because that story was recorded—supposedly by Asotura himself—on a little something called the Tablet of Asotura. The tablet went missing for centuries, but it was eventually found by a human explorer from Pacifidlog. But before he could go public with his discovery, well… you know what happened fourteen years ago,” he said quietly.

“Luckily, though, one of the explorer’s pokémon bothered to take care of the tablet after the explorer passed away. That pokémon eventually decided he wanted to see kwazai brought back into the world, and ultimately he found us and sought our assistance in that matter. Once he told me the story of Asotura and what his kwazai could do… well, there was no question about it. None. I knew I had to help him.”

DeLeo stepped back up to the containment field. “Do you remember what I told you earlier, Esaax? About why I founded the Hope Institute? This—” He gestured toward Esaax. “—ties into that. We turned you into this for a very special purpose, Esaax. A very, very important one.”

The weight inside Solonn sunk further, and his jaws parted in dismay of their own accord. There it was—DeLeo had admitted it. He was responsible for Esaax’s evolution. For forcing him to evolve against his will. To change into something he never asked to be in the name of someone else’s cause without asking for his consent.

With sympathy and horror all mixed into one, Solonn stared at the imprisoned kwazai. I could’ve stopped this, he realized. I could’ve prevented this if I’d only known…

DeLeo pressed his hands against the force field once more. “You’ll see,” he half-whispered, sounding slightly crazed, his smile spreading wide across his face. “It’s gonna be just like the old days. Only better.”

He then turned away from Esaax and headed for the exit, striding past Solonn along the way. The glalie watched him in silence for a moment, still in shock. Then he sent an apologetic glance back at Esaax and turned to catch up with DeLeo, his eyes burning with anger.

DeLeo opened the doors with his voice command once more, then motioned for Solonn to go on ahead of him. Solonn did so automatically, too preoccupied to question it, but he did at least think to shoot the human a vehement glare as he moved past him.

That glare stayed fixed on DeLeo as the human began making his way back down the hall, and Solonn remained stuck where he hovered, quivering with outrage.

“How could you do such a thing?” he finally demanded, sounding equally angry and hurt.

DeLeo stopped in his tracks and turned to face him. “…What? What are you talking about?”

“You did this to him,” Solonn said, still shaking as he spoke, “without his consent? Without even so much as his awareness that he could be changed in such a way?”

DeLeo blinked at him, bemused. “What… what’s it to you?”

Solonn’s eyes narrowed. “You have no right to inflict a change on someone who doesn’t ask for it first.” He moved forward, causing the human to take a step back. “No one has that right. You disgust me, DeLeo.”

Fear, or something resembling it, began showing through DeLeo’s expression. “Look… I’m sorry you don’t like how we’ve gone about this whole kwazai business, okay? I really am. But… don’t you understand what we’re trying to do here?” he asked, pained frustration in his voice. “Were you even paying attention to anything I said in there other than the parts you didn’t like? We’re trying to restore lives, Solonn! And let me tell you something: once we’ve restored certain lives in particular, I promise you Esaax is gonna be so happy that he’s not gonna care that he didn’t have a say in whether or not he evolved.”

“And what if this legend you spoke of is just that—a legend?” Solonn asked. “What if it turns out you’ve just been chasing a damn rumor all this time? Did you consider that possibility for even a second? Did you consider what it might do to Esaax if he were told that he can bring back people he cares about when in reality he can’t, to find out that he was subjected to a change—one that has obviously upset him very much—for nothing?”

DeLeo only stared at him at first. Then his face twisted in as much of a look of anguish as it could produce. “…It’s more than a legend,” he insisted. “I’m sorry you can’t see that… and I’m not gonna let you get in the way of our proving it!”

With an inhuman speed, DeLeo’s hands swung out at Solonn, and each of them split down the middle with a faint click. They opened like the covers of a book to expose dark, metallic nozzles. In nearly the same instant, jets of fire came roaring out of the newly-revealed weapons—Solonn only narrowly conjured a protect shield in time to deflect the flames, hissing and recoiling in fear from the attack even as he thwarted it.

His eyes then blazed a bright white, and the sound of the sheer cold attack he released in retaliation echoed through the hallway. The attack hit its mark—DeLeo immediately passed out and dropped heavily to the floor.

Solonn looked down at him in lingering disbelief, still shaking in primal fear for a few moments, then called out with the full force of his voice to his co-workers in the Hope Institute, not comfortable with the notion of leaving such a dangerously augmented human unguarded despite DeLeo’s present condition.

He couldn’t undo what DeLeo had done to Esaax. But he could at least see to it that the human paid for his crimes.

Alij was the first to arrive. His eyes went huge at the sight of DeLeo lying prone there. “Whoa, hey, what happened here? Who did this?”

“I did.” Solonn watched the rest of the glalie filter in shortly after Alij’s arrival, with Grosh and Oth taking up the rear.

“What… but why?” Evane asked.

The hurt in her voice made Solonn wince slightly. She won’t want to believe this. Gods knew he didn’t, either. “He’s a crook,” he told everyone gathered there. “That pokémon who burned through the wall, that kwazai… DeLeo forced him to evolve. It’s driven him mad.”

“I…” Evane began hesitantly. Her eyelight wavered as she stared down at DeLeo. “…I don’t know. Are you sure he forced him? Why would he do such a thing?”

“For his goals,” Solonn answered. “For his plans to revive humanity. He seems to think kwazai can raise the dead.” He couldn’t have sounded or looked more skeptical if he’d tried.

“Well… what if they can?” Moriel asked quietly.

Solonn met her gaze with dismay in the color of his eyes. You can’t be siding with him. Please. But… in spite of himself, and with a snarl of disgust turned inward, he realized he couldn’t blame her. Not entirely.

He sighed, frustrated with a number of things at once. “I don’t know,” he said finally, honestly. “But… ultimately, I think whether or not Esaax uses those powers—if he even has them,” he stressed, “—should be up to him.” His gaze shifted unconsciously, in the general direction of a towering hotel that, as far as he knew, still stood near the edge of town. He swallowed hard. “That much, at least, should be his choice.”

“We should try to convince him it’s the right thing to do, at least,” Evane said. “If there’s any chance we could see her again…”

Whether or not there was going to be more to that sentence, Solonn couldn’t say. Once it had been left hanging long enough for him to doubt she’d continue, “You can talk to him. But you can’t force him. Please.”

“I… would never…” Evane assured him.

“None of us would,” Viraya said seriously.

Then something at the floor caught and held her eye. “Sister, look…”

Evane followed her gaze. So did everyone else. “His hands…” she remarked, bemused.

Grosh recoiled slightly, then shook his head. “Well I’m glad you’re all right, more than glad… But this is crazy. Oth… are you sure this guy’s human after all?”

<All evidence I found during my last scan indicates that he is. There was nothing to suggest otherwise.>

“Maybe he’d found a way to hide the truth from you,” Viraya said, “just as he kept his weapons hidden.”

That… wasn’t a comforting thought. At all. Solonn had trusted Oth’s psychic perception for a long time. He’d known it wasn’t infallible; the claydol couldn’t scan dark-types. But now… now he had to wonder what else might be able to deceive them.

“I’d heard rumors that some humans weren’t typeless,” Viraya went on. “Do you think… is it possible he’s actually a dark-type?”

<No,> Oth said. <That much, at least, I can confirm. A true dark-type would have ejected me from their mind. Painfully.> They rattled to themself once more. <At this point, I can only suspect he used a device of some kind—an implant, perhaps—to control what I could detect within his mind.>

Solonn realized he’d begun shaking and stilled himself with an effort. He looked down at DeLeo for signs that he might be coming around sometime soon and found none, but even that much was difficult to trust at this point. He let out a held breath. “Something needs to be done about him. The city’s authorities need to know what they’d been harboring.”

“I’ll go,” Moriel volunteered. “I think I know how to get to the police station from here, and if I’m wrong…” She gave a quick tilt of her head. “I can find someone, I’m sure.”

“…All right,” Solonn said, at which Moriel sped off without delay. “And… I think it would be best if we got DeLeo away from here. Away from Esaax.” He didn’t want to give the human—or whatever DeLeo was—an opportunity to turn those flamethrowers or any other secret weapons upon Esaax. DeLeo had done more than enough to the kwazai already.

“Leave it to me,” Grosh said. “Someone needs to go back and guard that breach anyhow. Might as well be me.”

“Father…”

“Come on, now. I’m made of sturdier stuff than the lot of you. No offense,” Grosh added quickly.

Alij grunted irritably, but no one else had any objection.

“Just… be careful, all right?” Solonn said.

“Will do,” Grosh assured him, then lowered his head over the unconscious human and plucked him up off the floor by his shirt.

As soon as Grosh had left the scene, Alij moved past Solonn to the double doors barring access to the holding chamber. “We should have a talk with… Esaax, was it? Just to see if he’s as mad as you say. If he’s not, well… I’d kind of like to find out for sure whether he was duped into this or not. From his own mouth.”

He looked the doors up and down, then frowned. “…These are some of those voice-doors,” he remembered aloud.

“Yes,” Solonn confirmed.

“…All right, then how are we supposed to get Esaax out of there?”

Solonn knew a way. He could open those doors right there and then. But if it could be avoided… He swallowed audibly. “I’m sure the authorities can get in without any—”

BOOM.

Four faces instantly turned to face the source of the noise.

“Moriel…” Evane whispered, and Solonn thought he felt his heart stop for a moment. The sound—the explosion, he was all too sure—had come from precisely the direction she’d gone.

No one gave the command. No one had to. In an instant, all five of them were off to investigate. Please, let her be all right… Solonn prayed silently as he pushed through the air.

Even in the worst-case scenario, she might be fine, some other part of his mind dared to point out.

He hissed at it. I can’t expect that of him.

To say nothing of the fact that he really didn’t want to find her in the kind of condition that would necessitate that.

But he didn’t have to. An arbok had just rounded the corner—and looked very sorry to have done so—with a… Solonn squinted at the pokémon striding along behind the arbok, trying to identify her, but couldn’t. But she did look suspiciously like a wobbuffet, he thought; she had the eyes and the blue skin and the black, eye-bearing tail of one. Or four tails, from the looks of things. She was rather taller, though, with twice as many arms, half as many legs, and a more humanoid face. Evolved, he suspected, at which something inside him went sour.

Was DeLeo responsible for another one?

The… whatever-she-was set something down on the floor with a heavy thunk, drawing Solonn’s eyes to it. To him. A nosepass, Solonn recognized, albeit barely; several portions of the rock-type were simply missing.

Solonn had a very unpleasant notion as to why.

“Stay put,” the unfamiliar pokémon hissed to the plainly-nervous arbok as she stepped up to stand beside him, “and try to stay calm. Please.”

“What are you people doing here?” Alij demanded as he came to a stop a few feet away from the three strangers; the rest of the team did likewise. He moved a few inches to the side, peering past the arbok, and his eyes narrowed as they found the broken nosepass there. “Actually, never mind that. I think we’ve already got our answer,” he said, and nodded toward the unconscious rock-type.

“You were responsible for that explosion?” Solonn asked the pokémon who’d been carrying the nosepass.

“Yes,” the blue pokémon answered evenly, “but we hadn’t intended to cause one. It was all just a misunderstanding. We ran into one of your people unexpectedly; he—” She gestured toward the arbok. “—attacked her out of panic; and things just sort of escalated, unfortunately. Don’t worry—she’s sill alive, although she does need to get some medical attention soon.”

All of the glalie’s eyes widened at the news, and Alij swore aloud. “Where is she?” he demanded.

The blue pokémon pointed back toward the room from whence she’d come. Alij and Solonn rushed off in that direction at once, as did Oth.

A hole in the wall caught Solonn’s attention the moment he entered the room, and he made for it at once. Rushing over the littered floor, with only the occasional bit of rock scraping his belly—bits of a person, he helplessly reminded himself—he hoped dearly that the strange pokémon had been telling the truth about Moriel, and that she wouldn’t be hurt too badly to save…

That… wasn’t promising. With dread, Solonn joined him to see Moriel’s condition for himself. What he found was, thankfully, not quite as bad as Alij’s tone had led him to expect. But it was still rough, seeing her as she was: a horn broken, half her armor missing. And gods, the blood. No more of it was escaping at this point—Alij had already patched up the wound, he guessed, if the fact that the armor was now regenerating by a will other than his own was anything to go by—but the pool that still lingered there and the amount of mist that hung over it still told a grisly tale.

He heard the sound of something slithering into the room then, something much lighter and less craggy than the serpent he knew personally. Solonn turned to regard Viraya, the arbok, and the latter’s two companions for a moment before drifting forward to meet them. Oth moved forward, as well, and Evane went past the two of them to look in on Moriel herself. Alij and Viraya stayed put.

“Why did you come here?” Solonn asked of the intruders, his voice heavy.

“Because someone here desperately needs help,” the blue pokémon said. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there’s a pokémon here who’s been forced to evolve. He’s elementally unstable—he needs a psychic-type of his own kind to serve as a vessel for his excess darkness. Please… you’ve got to give me a chance to balance him out. He won’t survive otherwise.”

Oh gods… DeLeo’s crimes, it seemed, were worse than he’d realized. A fresh bolt of sickness shot through Solonn at the fact someone’s life could be in danger because he’d failed to see this coming.

“Do you mean Esaax?” he asked. The question came out of its own accord.

Solonn sent a glance back toward Alij and Evane… or only toward the former, he found, and he hoped that was because Evane had gone out for help. He looked away, frowning. He wanted to believe the kwazai. He wanted to just rush to Esaax’s aid then and there.

But he’d already been fooled once today, with grave consequences.

He sighed. “Would you consent to a psychic scan in order to prove that you’re telling the truth?” he asked the kwazai. Even as Solonn spoke, however, he remembered how Oth’s last scan had been tricked. He bit back a hiss. Please let me trust this, at least…

The kwazai didn’t bother to keep herself from scowling. “Will it be quick?”

<Yes,> Oth assured her, <and it will be painless.>

“Fine, then,” she said.

Without hesitation, Oth brought themself to hover right in front of her, lowered their head, and closed all but the foremost of their eyes. Soon afterward, <She is completely truthful in her claims.>

Solonn hoped to all gods that was the case. Especially since he didn’t have the heart to obstruct her any further. Not when there was a chance that Esaax really was in mortal danger. Not when part of him still blamed himself, and what trust he’d given DeLeo, for the wobbuffet’s forced evolution.

“All right,” he said quietly. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to Esaax.” He made his way past the strangers to the corridor that led back toward the holding chamber. “I hope for his sake that you succeed,” he said earnestly as he heard the sounds of slithering scales and dainty feet following him out. “He’s already been through enough that he didn’t deserve.”

“I hope I succeed, too,” the kwazai said, her tone subdued.

Before they’d gotten far, Solonn heard a voice in the distance. A loud, furious voice—a roar, really. He couldn’t make out what, if anything, its maker was saying, but he was sure he knew who it was. The direction it came from made it all too easy to guess.

Thud.

The origin of that sound was a lot closer. Solonn turned at once to see what was going on and found the nosepass on the floor, with the kwazai standing unnaturally still, her tails—or rather the branches of a single tail, he realized—fanned out wide.

“What is it?” the arbok asked.

“Esaax,” the kwazai said in a voice filled with pain and fear. “He’s returned to my perception—and he’s in pain…”

“What? How bad is it?” the arbok demanded worriedly.

“It’s horrible… Dear Night, it’s like his own body is rejecting him…”

Oh gods, not good. Not good at all… “We’re almost there,” Solonn told her. He tried to sound confident, assuring. He fell short of both.

No sooner had he spoken than the kwazai rushed out in front of him, staggering slightly and clutching her head in obvious pain but still moving very fast. The doors, Solonn recalled, and hastened to join her. Maybe she could open them by force, but maybe she couldn’t. She’d need him in the latter case.

He caught up with her just in time to see her double over in front of the doors and let out a terrible scream. He rushed to her side to keep her from pitching over, and she took the hint, leaning against him readily. She fixed her posture, for the most part, and her scream died out almost as quickly as it had come. But a hand still gripped her forehead, her sharp teeth bared in a grimace.

There was no more time to lose. The rest of the pokémon were arriving on the scene now, Viraya helping the arbok carry the nosepass… but Solonn shut them out just as soon as he’d spotted them. How they’d react to what he was about to do… was a concern for another time. Right now, the only thing that mattered was the tormented creature beyond those doors.

“This is Sylvester DeLeo,” he spoke up, “requesting entry.” The voice wasn’t his own. The language wasn’t his own. But it was just what the computer keeping the room closed off wanted; it prompted him for a password just as it did for its true master. “Password,” Solonn responded, still using the borrowed voice and words.

The doors slid open. Solonn and the kwazai entered first, with Viraya and the arbok bringing in the nosepass behind them as Oth drifted at their side. And there before them all, still encased in a column of light, Esaax slumped against the barrier, panting and groaning with his tail lashing and his hands gripping his head tightly.

The female kwazai ran to him at once, pressing all four of her hands against the wall of energy, weeping openly all the while. Without taking her eyes off of Esaax, “How do you get him out of this thing?” she demanded.

“Over here!” Solonn called, and made for the control panel. She followed him without delay.

“I don’t know how to use this!” she told him.

“It’s all right; I do.” At least, he hoped he recalled the sequence correctly. “Just do exactly as I tell you, and we’ll have him out in no time.”

“You’re… you’re going to be all right,” a soft voice sounded from somewhere behind them as Solonn relayed his instructions to the kwazai beside him. It was the arbok, no doubt, most likely trying to console Esaax.

But it seemed to be in vain; Esaax cried out again, his voice deep and howling like the wind. At the same instant, the other kwazai convulsed hard, echoing Esaax’s scream. She staggered, and Solonn moved quickly to break her fall.

Sure enough, the containment field soon vanished with a faint humming sound. The female kwazai ran back to Esaax, dropping into as much of a kneeling posture as her stiltlike legs would allow and throwing her arms around him.

“Ntairow…” Esaax said as she cried into his chest, his voice hoarse and quavering. “I’m—” He broke off momentarily, giving a pained groan, at which Ntairow embraced him all the more tightly. “I’m glad you’re here. I’d… given up on us ever finding each other again.” He closed his eyes, lowering his head.

“No,” Ntairow responded, her voice suddenly charged with a fierce resolve. “You will survive this… and your son will finally get to know the father he’s been missing all these years.”

Esaax just stared at her for a moment, his eyes filled with disbelief and wonder. Then a smile spread across his muzzle in spite of his pain. “…You’re serious?”

Ntairow nodded. “He is called Zerzekai. And unless I’m mistaken, he’s just begun his life as a wobbuffet.”

Esaax managed a faint but earnestly joyous laugh, then wrapped his arms around Ntairow, hugging her as hard as his rapidly-waning strength would allow.

Ntairow, meanwhile, took on a look of deep concentration. She’s doing it, Solonn guessed. She’s balancing him… He willed her to succeed. He prayed for her to succeed, for Esaax to be wrong about his chances.

Her expression changed right before Solonn’s eyes. Suddenly she looked another sort of troubled altogether—more than anything, she looked confused.

No one got a chance to wonder why.

A dark aura flared around Esaax as he roared in a voice as vast and hollow as the depths of space and fired a black beam at the other kwazai, striking her with devastating force. A bright pink aura flashed around her at its impact, an autonomic and completely futile mirror coat response, and she collapsed on the spot, scattered black patches forming on her skin as she hit the ground.

With a hollow howl, the black aura around Esaax suddenly tore free from him, allowing an erratically-flashing, bright orange aura to surround him instead. The shadow took flight, rushing through the air, leaving the screaming kwazai behind.

Whether or not the shadow was truly a separate entity, Solonn couldn’t say for sure. But he wasn’t about to chance it. He fired an ice beam at the dark mass, and a hyper beam and a volley of poison sting needles flew forth in an attempt to stop the shadow, as well. But none of them connected, nor did the nhaza set off in the same moment. The disembodied darkness evaded all of the attacks effortlessly, destroying electronic equipment and killing the lights as they dodged every attack. Before anyone could strike again, the shadow smashed into the far wall and promptly burned through it, letting early morning light come pouring in. Once outside, the shadowy mass seemed to dissipate entirely.

Shaking, with no real idea as to what in the hell just happened, Solonn turned back toward Esaax. The kwazai was crumpled in a heap on the floor, orange sparks flickering all around him for one last moment before ceasing. Esaax then toppled over onto his side, panting arrhythmically, dark blue blood flowing from his eyes and mouth.

“…Esaax?” the arbok spoke up tentatively in a very faint, cracking voice.

Solonn felt something nudge his side. “Should we go?” Viraya asked.

Solonn was at a loss for an answer at first. “…You should,” he said finally. “Go see if the paramedics have arrived. Tell them they’re needed here, too.”

Viraya nodded, insofar as the nosepass on her head allowed, then lowered the rock-type to the floor and left the room.

Solonn, meanwhile, went right back to watching the two kwazai, his attention wrenched the rest of the way back toward them by the arbok who continued to call out Esaax’s name. Esaax was still alive, and he’d lifted his head ever so slightly. The arbok tried to get his attention again, but his cries seemed to fall on deaf ears.

It was easy to guess why. Esaax’s gaze had fallen upon Ntairow, at the sight of whom he gave a very faint, pained sound. She wasn’t breathing, Solonn realized. Esaax had just slain someone he loved… all because of DeLeo’s ambitions. Ambitions that may very well have been in vain.

But gods, did Solonn ever hope they hadn’t. If DeLeo was correct—Solonn couldn’t think of him as “right”—then at least the worst of this could be undone. Esaax couldn’t have his old form back, but Ntairow could have her life back. Maybe they both could.

With an immense effort, Esaax rolled over onto his belly and pulled himself up to lie beside Ntairow. He lifted a shaking hand, reached for her, and laid it down upon a still-blue patch on her arm.

A soft, multicolored glow surrounded him, then spread from the point where he touched her until it radiated from every square inch of her skin, as well.

Solonn’s jaws parted of their own accord, his eyes bright and flickering and very, very wide. It’s happening… he realized, or decided. He really couldn’t think of anything else it could be. His breath halted inside him, and he watched with a stream of prayers flowing through his mind, begging the phenomenon before him to succeed.

The glow surrounding the two kwazai suddenly grew to such an intensity that Solonn had to shut his eyes and turn away. Even then, some of the light made it through his eyelids. Once it was gone, he turned back toward Esaax and Ntairow just in time to see their shared aura burst into a cloud of tiny, colorful sparks, which fell in a brief, luminous shower over the two kwazai.

As the last sparks fell, Esaax looked down upon Ntairow. She was completely restored, at least in appearance; all of the strange burns were gone. He smiled gently, weakly, and kissed her forehead. Then he lay down next to her and quietly exhaled.

He didn’t breathe in again.

Ntairow inhaled suddenly and sharply, awake in an instant. She sat up abruptly, then immediately rolled over onto her hands and folded legs, her shoulders heaving as she coughed and sputtered uncontrollably.

As soon as she caught her breath again, she started looking about frantically, confused. Her eyes fell upon Esaax, who was surrounded now by no colors other than the deep sapphire of his own shed blood.

Her cry of sorrow rang out for a very long moment.

Solonn stared in silent disbelief at the scene before him, his heart going leaden. The legend was true… His eyes screwed shut, his teeth bared all the further and quivering, and he shook in midair with the force of his dry sobs. Dear gods, it was true! The kwazai did have the power to raise the dead, just as DeLeo had believed.

“He saved her,” Solonn managed weakly, and that’s all he managed. He turned away, moving past Evane and Viraya and a team of chansey who’d just arrived in the corridor. In spite of their efforts, DeLeo’s desperation had cost Esaax his life, and Solonn could bear to look upon the scene of their failure no longer.

In an alleyway that lay largely untouched by the midday sun, a cardboard box hopped and rattled about as if under its own power. Rustling sounds could be heard from within, had there been an audience. But no one was around to watch the box dance.

Just as well, as moments later, it toppled off of the small mountain of boxes it had perched on, emitting a very un-boxlike shriek as it fell.

Whump.

It wasn’t the most graceful landing, nor the most dignified. The nanab peels splayed out on his head like a bizarre wig didn’t help matters. But at least the rattata had finally gotten himself free from that box, and at least he’d finally secured the source of that enticing berry smell.

He shook the scraps off, then delicately took one of the peels in his front paws and sat back on his haunches to enjoy it.

Then a shadow passed overhead, and he forgot all about his own lunch, fearing he was about to become someone else’s.

Hoping and praying he hadn’t been spotted yet, he darted into the gap between two trash bins and waited anxiously behind one of them, ears and whiskers twitching at a frenzied pace. A sound like wind filled the alleyway, but the air remained perfectly still. Whatever the thing was, it was still around. Still prowling.

The rattata’s pulse quickened painfully. It was starting to look like he hadn’t escaped the hunter’s notice after all.

The shadow snaked its way into the rodent’s hiding place—a shadow cast by nothing at all. Maybe it was a ghost, the rattata thought, trying to calm himself. Maybe he could avoid the worst of their powers.

When the dark mass suddenly darted at him like a striking snake, narrowly missing, he decided he didn’t want to chance it.

He tore out from behind the bins, out into the open daylight, hoping desperately that the thing couldn’t handle the sun, or at least disliked it enough to decide against following him.

The shadow flew out into the light, seemingly undaunted, and lanced through the air at the rattata with a tornadic howl.

His blood ran cold, and that was the only reaction he had time to give before the dark mass struck and engulfed him, sinking in like a chill in the air.

The rattata’s fur darkened. His eyes flung wide open and filled with a piercing white light. He let out a distorted cry, spasming violently—and crumbled to powder, right then and there.

The shadow fled the scene, scattering the gray dust of their victim in their wake as they thinned out to invisibility once more. The search for a host that could handle them wasn’t over yet.

* * *

“And remember: if it ain’t Nutten’s, it ain’t nuttin’!”

The television in the waiting room had been blaring the entire time, but no one there really paid it any mind. Solonn had checked out of whatever it’d had to offer once he realized they’d missed the news—not that he’d exactly relished the idea of being reminded about the night before. Nor did he really need reminding. He could still see that blinding rainbow aura when he closed his eyes, could still hear the strange, hollow roar of… whatever it was that had torn free from the doomed kwazai.

He was sure it all would’ve given him a hell of a nightmare, had he actually managed to fall asleep the night before.

All the same, the news might’ve shed some additional light on the Hope Institute, which might’ve made finding Jen a little easier. It might’ve also yielded more information about DeLeo—though odds were it had just focused on one of his most unusual traits, which they’d already learned about from the authorities earlier that morning. There in their cell, he’d admitted how he’d survived the Extinction: he wasn’t human after all. It turned out he was an ordinary meowth, one who’d been masquerading as a human being with the help of an elaborate animatronic disguise.

Why he’d been doing so remained unknown… though Solonn had his guesses, in the wake of some of the things DeLeo had said. “It’s gonna be just like the old days.” The disguise, much like his dreams of resurrecting humanity, was probably just another way of clinging to a past that DeLeo desperately missed.

Solonn might’ve felt sorry for him under other circumstances. As it stood… no. He couldn’t sympathize with him. Not after what DeLeo had done to Esaax.

Where thoughts of yesterday didn’t intrude, a more powerful sense than ever that Jen needed to get out of this town right now dominated Solonn’s mind—it was all he could do not to go tearing out of the Haven and resume his search right away. His surroundings weren’t helping matters. The gardevoir might well have been present, and a member of his party was in a potentially vulnerable position at the moment.

So it behooved Solonn and the rest to see to it that Moriel returned to them, safe and sound. What Jen’s captor could possibly want from her, no one could guess. But no one knew what the gardevoir had wanted with Jen, either.

Solonn heard chansey feet padding along in the hallway outside, as did everyone else; they looked and found the normal-type coming to a stop at the doorway with a familiar glalie in tow.

“I’m happy to report that your friend is as good as new,” the chansey said, smiling.

Moriel certainly looked the part; even her broken horn had been restored. Her eyes met Alij’s, and the latter came rushing past the chansey to hover before her. She glanced past him, giving the rest a smile, though she didn’t quite look happy to see them. Just relieved.

“So. I guess we’re done here…?” Alij sounded genuinely unsure.

“…For now.” Part of Solonn wanted to see if that gardevoir really was available this time. Part of him wanted to confront him. The rest was well aware of how much harder it would be to rescue his brother from jail, or from whatever remote corner of the world the gardevoir might decide to warp the meddling glalie to this time.

“Take care, all right?” the chansey said as the small group of glalie and the claydol who accompanied them filed out past her.

“Will do,” Moriel assured her with a quick backwards glance. To her companions, “I’m just glad none of you had to be let out with me,” she said, half-sighing. “What happened after I blacked out? What did you do about the intruders?”

Solonn bit his tongue involuntarily as he emerged into the open air outside the Haven, where Grosh was waiting to rejoin them. No, there really wasn’t any getting away from the previous night’s events. “It’s… complicated,” he said wearily. But she’d been taken in by DeLeo just as he had. She had every right to know what had happened, why she’d gotten into that fight in the first place.

He just hoped the rest of his friends were prepared to pick up the story if he found it too hard to continue.

* * *

The house was empty, save for the snorunt in the living room.

Syr was out, off somewhere quiet to be by himself for a while. After what he’d heard about the night before, Jen couldn’t blame him. That made two friends his adoptive father had lost within a very short span. He could only hope the arbok would pull through all right, especially given his unwillingness to go to Hope meetings with him.

There was a knock at the door, at which Jen hopped off the sofa and made to answer it in no particular hurry. It was followed after a beat by six more in rapid succession—with wide eyes, he picked up the pace. It was him!

Sure enough, when he pulled the door open and turned his gaze upward, he was met with exactly the face he’d expected. A gardevoir stood there, blue-haired and orange-eyed, and he was smiling warmly. A whismur stood at his side, looking slightly apprehensive.

“Yes.” Adn into the living room, opening the parcel as Jen shut the door behind him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find it faster. I know you’ve been fighting it pretty hard on your end.”

“That… is an understatement.” Jen dropped himself back on the couch, shuddering a bit as he recalled the last time his element had almost gotten the better of him. “You’re lucky you found it when you did. I almost evolved yesterday.”

“Oh dear…” Adn looked down at him pityingly. “Again, I apologize. I knew you didn’t have much time left, but…” He clasped his hands, the pouch quivering in his grasp, and took a steadying breath. “Hm. Better late than never, I suppose…”

Here he pulled the item he’d brought in out of its pouch. It was a black thorn, about seven inches in length, that came to a luridly purple and very sharp point. “And there you have it. One dire thorn, just as promised,” he said proudly, then handed the item to Jen.

Jen grasped it around the middle, turning it over in his hands a couple of times to see how the light caught its bright tip, mindful not to prick his palms on it. It contained venom; he knew that much. A very potent venom.

But that’s not all he knew about it. “Should we really do this here?” he asked, concerned eyes sweeping the room around him. The whismur shuddered almost imperceptibly at his words. “I don’t want to make a mess…”

“Hmmm… I really don’t think we should risk anyone seeing the thorn before you’ve had a chance to use it,” Adn said, frowning. “Raxxi can be careful,” he assured him, patting the whismur on the head. “And this shouldn’t take long, judging from what you said about yesterday.”

“Well… okay. But you’ve got to help me clean up if something happens. I don’t want my dad throwing a hissy-fit. And… please be careful,” he reminded Raxxi, but for a different reason. “We have some berries, but I still don’t want you getting sick.”

The whismur gave a quick nod. “I will,” he said.

Adn stepped back, and Raxxi stepped forward. The whismur took a deep breath, letting it out with a soft, whistling noise. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

Jen gave him a nod. Then, with the dire thorn clutched in his hand, he launched off the sofa into a headbutt. Raxxi only stared back, and he took the hit without resisting in the slightest, though he did let out an “oof!” at the impact.

The snorunt and the whismur went sliding a short distance across the floor before coming to a stop against the wall. Jen frowned down at Raxxi as he stood, then looked up at Adn. “You didn’t tell me he wasn’t going to fight back at all…”

Adn shrugged. “And he didn’t tell me. I suppose he just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. At any rate, you did mention having berries on hand, did you not?”

“Yeah, but…”

“I’ll be fine,” Raxxi said weakly. “Just… don’t use the poison on me, okay?”

Jen inhaled deeply, still more than a little apprehensive about what he had to do. But the fact remained that time wasn’t on his side. If he didn’t make use of Adn’s gift soon, becoming a glalie would happen sooner rather than later—and he hadn’t forgotten a word of what the gardevoir had told him about glalie. About what not only their new bodies but also their society demanded of them. Jen would not let himself become such a creature.

He sighed. “All right,” he finally said. With his eyes screwed all the while, he headbutted the whismur again, and again, and again… and then stopped as a strange sort of energy, familiar and yet not, began pulsing through him from the hand that held the dire thorn. Even through his closed eyes, he could see the brilliant light he gave off as, once again, the process of evolution began. But this time… this time, he didn’t fight it.

This change would save him, not condemn him to a life of killing and servitude.

He felt himself elongating greatly, with numerous blades and spikes erupting from his hide. It hurt, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. He cried out, only to lose his voice as he transformed fully into energy. He could still feel the embrace of the mother element… but there was a new one at her side. Something dark and earthly that brought a current of unease as it took its place within him but soon settled into something much more tolerable.

He’d never felt so safe, so powerful in his entire life.

The light faded out. Moments later, he dared to open his eyes, letting a sickly yellow light spill from them. They’d succeeded. He’d evolved into a cryonide rather than a glalie.

His snakelike lower body pulled into a loose coil, his long arms descending to carefully pick up the unconscious whismur lying before him. “Thank you,” he told Raxxi, his voice low and hissing at its edges. He had every intention of thanking the whismur again once the latter was awake.

Balancing him across his arms, too fearful of letting him come into contact with his long claws and spiked chest to do otherwise, Jen turned about and slithered around the table to lay him on the sofa. He bumped his head against one of the artificial stalactites hanging from the ceiling in the process. “Ow!” He looked up at it and gave an irate little click of his new mandibles. He’d have to be a lot more mindful of his size now.

Jen carefully placed his friend on the couch, hoping the armrest would suffice for a pillow—he didn’t dare try to move the cushions, not with blades for fingers. He frowned and made a faint chittering noise as another problem occurred to him: How am I going to get the berries?

“Adn?” he spoke up, turning to face the gardevoir—only to find him already headed into the kitchen. Jen let out a relieved sigh. “They’re in the cabinets,” he made sure to inform the gardevoir, but it sounded as though he’d already guessed that much himself.

Jen looked Raxxi over again before moving to the next step—and it felt like something had just ripped his heart right out. The whismur wasn’t breathing, and he was giving off noticeably less heat than before.

“Wh-what…” Dear gods, had he done this? He’d been reluctant to beat the poor creature into unconsciousness, let alone death… He stared helplessly at Raxxi in horrified bewilderment for another moment. Then, “Adn!” he cried out, his voice cracking. “Adn!”

Adn returned from the kitchen, but unhurriedly. He carried a box of oran berries, which he’d already opened. He popped one into his mouth as he approached the couch, regarding the dead whismur for barely a second before fixing his gaze on Jen. The gardevoir was smiling.

Jen’s confusion worsened at the sight of him. “Can’t you see what happened? I killed him. Oh gods, I killed him…” he said between panicked breaths, his palms pressed to his temples. One of his horns nicked his right hand, letting blood and mist seep out between his claws. He didn’t notice.

Adn’s words didn’t register immediately, held back by Jen’s guilt and disbelief. But once they clicked, his jaws fell open and his eyes widened, their light brightening and trembling. “But… but why?” he asked weakly, genuinely confused. This wasn’t like Adn. This didn’t make sense, coming from someone who’d gone to such lengths to keep Jen from becoming a killer.

“Because the dead tell no tales.” And with that, Adn’s eyes went pitch black, his entire body turning a bright blue. Jen could only stare in horror as the gardevoir suddenly melted into an amorphous blue blob. A ditto, he realized as his wits clicked back into place.

Jen backed away from the ditto in a rush, knocking the table over in the process. His long tail got caught up in it; he twisted over himself in a brief tangle of black, spiky flesh in his efforts to free himself. He righted himself in a hurry, dark venom beginning to leak from the hollow tips of his mandibles.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “What did you do to the real Adn?”

The ditto chuckled in a high-pitched voice. “Silly boy. I am the real Adn. But most of the time, I go by Anomaly.”

It was hard to take that for an answer. Was the creature before him telling the truth? He couldn’t guess. He could hardly care at this point. Whether or not the ditto was lying now, they’d already lied to him today. Betrayed him. And now there was a murderer in his house.

If his father returned while the creature was still here…

Jen let out a piercing cry. His hand shot forward toward Anomaly, and he fired an ice beam from it. It connected, and the ditto warbled weirdly in pain, but wasted no time at all in retaliating. Long tendrils whipped outward from their amorphous body, and though Jen tried to dodge, they simply stretched and twisted and extended to match his every move and then some, and soon he could no longer predict their movements. A swerve to the wrong side, his spiked back bashing into the kitchen doorway and ripping up the frame, and the tendrils caught him, wrapping around his neck in an instant, their ends piercing effortlessly through his dark, icy armor and tough hide.

His mandibles darted out, stabbing into the blue flesh and injecting their venom, and he saw a sickly purple tinge spread up their length to the blob still sitting on the couch. They grimaced, but the signs of their poisoning soon began to fade, and the creature began to grow.

Gasping for air, Jen slashed at the appendages tightening around his throat, severing them with a spray of colorless blood. The ends still wrapped around his neck simply liquefied, while what remained of the tendrils withdrew back into their owner’s body—a body that was taking on the shape of another pokémon altogether, Jen realized, and he lunged and tried to slash the flesh apart as it changed from blue to a scorching red. Glowing blood gushed out over his hands, and he screamed in agony, hurling himself out of the way of what he now recognized to be a fire-type.

A torrent of flame erupted behind him, and without so much as a thought spared for the damage he was inflicting upon his father’s house, Jen burst out through the bay window, the glass slicing into his arms, the flames melting the armor off his tail. Struggling to maintain his coordination despite the terrible pain, he dashed away from the house as fast as his serpentine body could carry him.

He caught sight of one of his hands—the claws cracked, the flesh half-gone—and he nearly froze in horror for a moment before another burst of flame at his tail spurred him on all the faster. He threw a glance back over his shoulder—there was a magmortar chasing him, and while he wasn’t nearly as fast as the cryonide, his arm-cannons had an incredible range.

Whipping his head back around, he saw other pokémon starting to investigate the commotion from the intersection ahead. Some of them turned on their heels or kept on driving at the sight that met them, but others stayed put, transfixed and, in some cases, looking like they wanted a fight.

A couple of them looked like they could take on a magmortar. But there was no guarantee they could take on whatever else the ditto decided to become.

Solonn never did get to finish his story about the night before. Not when an uproar from a not-too-distant part of town seized his attention, as well as that of everyone else around him.

“Oh, no you don’t…” Grosh snarled before charging toward the source of all the noise and chaos, tearing up the sidewalk in his haste.

“Wait!” Solonn shouted. Alij did likewise. But barely any sooner than the cries had left their mouths, they found themselves along for the ride, rushing forward at the steelix’s sides and evading the debris he flung about.

Solonn heard a voice calling out from somewhere unseen, begging the terrified citizens to flee. He saw a burst of flame shoot across the street from around the corner and was all too ready to join the pokémon thundering past him and the others.

But then he saw the source of that voice.

He didn’t know what he was looking at, exactly. He doubted anyone with him had, either. But there was enough similarity to Solonn’s own kind—the huge incisors, the glistening armor, the glowing eyes—to make him stop and wonder.

Was that…?

The strange pokémon met his gaze for a fraction of a second. Then: “What are you doing, go! Go!” he shouted, gesturing wildly with his long-clawed hands, barreling over an abandoned vehicle as he surged by—pursued by a red-and-pink magmortar, albeit not closely. But the fire pokémon didn’t need to get close. Not with that range.

As if of one mind, all of the glalie present threw shields up and tried to take the assailant out in an instant, the air shattering into noise as they attacked in near unison.

But the magmortar stood unaffected, and he quickly turned his flamethrowers toward Grosh, whose roar of pain was muffled as he plunged into the asphalt as if it were liquid. Water from a burst main erupted skyward in the wake of his dig attack; the magmortar winced and hissed as it came raining down on him, and he began to rapidly dissolve—

—only to reform.

“A ditto!” Viraya noted aloud, firing an ice beam at the darkening, shifting mass. Several more converged on the transforming pokémon, including one from the strange, black, serpentine creature. Within an instant, the ditto was encased in ice.

Grosh exploded from beneath the ditto, hurling the frozen pokémon into the air. The ditto crashed heavily through a nearby second-story window, the glass shattering noisily.

Oth ascended and entered the building, shining with cosmic power, a mass of conjured stones floating around them as they charged. Torrents of water exploded from inside the destroyed apartment, pushing the claydol right out before they could land a hit, their ancient power stones dropping to the sidewalk below. A purple blastoise emerged and swept another hydro pump across his field of vision. Grosh took the attack right in the face and toppled over, plunging back underground with a loud crashing noise, and the pressurized water blasted several of the glalie into cars and other pokémon before Viraya managed to freeze it in midair.

The ice must have run all the way up and deep into the blastoise’s cannons; he bellowed in pain and jerked backward, and the frozen stream broke free and went crashing to the sidewalk. The ditto in disguise barely dodged a gunk shot from the unfamiliar ice-type, then turned to retaliate.

A dark mass suddenly materialized in front of him, darting forward and sinking into his flesh before he could react.

The ditto immediately lost their assumed shape. Howling and keening, they tried to take on a new one as the strange shadow that had infected them darkened further, but none of the transformations remained stable for more than a split-second.

Nearly every pokémon in the vicinity took the opportunity to launch a concentrated assault on the helpless shapeshifter, but none of their attacks seemed to have any effect. Still, they pressed on, beams colliding with the quivering flesh.

They abruptly cut off when Grosh burst back onto the scene. The steelix grabbed the ditto in his jaws, then flung them to the soaked and shattered street with a violent, wrenching motion. Roaring, he slammed an iron tail into the dark, shapeless mass, and then another, and another—

Then Grosh pulled his tail back sharply, wailing. Its end had been dissolved clean off, black blood seeping from the stump.

“Get back, get back!” Moriel screamed hoarsely as Solonn stared at his father’s injury in horror. But he heeded her advice, even as he stared; everyone in the area did, save for a single vigoroth, whose entire body glowed a fierce orange as he flung himself claws-first at the ditto.

He never made contact with their disintegrating aura. The ditto exploded into a burst of silver light an instant before impact, blowing the vigoroth away. Solonn cried out in pain, temporarily blinded, his ears ringing. He kept on hurtling backward nonetheless, trying his damnedest not to hit the ground. Something crumpled against his back, gouging into his flesh with a jagged metal edge.

The first thing he saw once he could see again was the sight of an oddly dull gray beam, almost more like a blade, howling past Oth. The claydol shuddered in midair and fell, minus one hand and a few of their eyes.

Before anyone could react, another gray beam burned a hole between Alij’s eyes, shooting out of the back of his head with a burst of mist.

A third tore through the air, and this one was aimed right at Solonn. He felt it explode against a shield he very nearly didn’t raise in time, its strange, lightless energy dissipating like dust in his face.

It blinded him for a moment, but Solonn knew what he’d see if he didn’t move. He dove out of the way, feeling glass shatter and bite into his hide, and kept going into the space beyond. Racks of clothing and accessories clattered and clanged and fell in his wake, draping fabric over his face and blinding him again until he stopped and shook it off.

Solonn rushed back to the broken window, praying silently and aloud that no one else was dead. From across the street, he saw the new form of their attacker for the first time. The thing was nearly human shaped and seemingly made of white, lightless fire, their head a towering plume of flames-that-weren’t, their body tapering into a ghostly tail.

The creature fired at another of the glalie—from this distance, and with so much dust in the air, it was hard to tell which—only to be foiled by protect again. That glalie promptly retaliated with a blizzard—and while they didn’t freeze this time, the specter’s hollow, anguished roar told that the impact hurt badly all the same.

Solonn charged back out onto the ruined street with an ice beam coalescing between his horns, but the specter surged out of the way before it could connect—only to smack right into a bystander’s psybeam. There, apparently, was another weakness; the creature howled again, gripping their head.

Their pitch-black eyes opened again, and they took on a look of deep concentration. Another gunk shot went hurtling their way, but they zipped out of harm’s way again with their trance unbreaking.

Only to come out of it themself in clear confusion.

“No…” they hissed in a voice like a rustling wind. They trembled in midair, faintly at first but then violently, angrily. “It can’t… my collection…”

Another volley of assorted beams forbade the creature to piece their thoughts together beyond that. Again they dodged, plunging into one of the tunnels Grosh had torn through the earth beneath the street.

Without so much as a moment’s thought, Solonn dove in after them.

He wasn’t alone. He could hear and feel other bodies rushing through the air behind him, along with long, loping steps. The tunnel sloped at a sharp but navigable angle, and it was wide enough for him, but only just; no one could hope to pass him—nor each other, in all likelihood. If the specter turned and fired again, only his shield would save him. And it could only save him so often, and for so long…

Ahead, the creature was burning away the earth before them using those gray beams, tunneling forward and downward, and they were doing so very, very quickly. Solonn fired on them again, hoping to catch them off guard. He succeeded, but still the creature endured. In a swirl of lightless fire, they spun and shot at him with one hand, the other still tunneling ahead with a sustained beam. Again, it hit his shield.

No sooner had the protect aura dropped than a fresh attack blossomed into being around the specter’s hand.

There was a rushing noise, energy cutting the air—but from somewhere behind him. A searing yellow hyper beam—Oth, Solonn wanted desperately to believe, but the last he’d seen of them…

The hyper beam and the specter’s attack collided, their energies dispersing in a burst that sizzled against the earthen walls, and against Solonn’s face. He hissed, fighting to keep his eyes open and his mind on the figurative trigger of a number of techniques at once. At his side, he could hear more tunneling sounds; there was a shout of “Move your ass!” followed by the sight of a swampert shoving his way past in the now-widened tunnel. With a wet, unpleasant noise, the swampert launched a mud bomb at the specter—

—which sailed past them into the vast room that the creature’s gray beams had just breached.

The mud bomb crashed into a terminal against the wall, sending a burst of sparks to the floor. Red lights filled the room, flooding out into the tunnel, the specter silhouetted against it like candle smoke, and a tinny alarm sounded again and again and again.

There was a hissing noise from somewhere out of sight, and the creature flew in toward it. The pokémon on their tail followed and renewed their assault. Still willing and able to put up a fight, the creature clapped their wispy hands together, and a shockwave burst out from between them, washing over the defending pokémon before they could react.

Solonn snarled at it, and he could hear pained sounds from those around him. But he wasn’t hurt badly, and he suspected that neither was anyone else. It was probably—he narrowly evaded another gray beam, some unknown, wall-mounted device imploding as he plowed into it—A diversion, he thought dazedly, spitting out a broken bit of something.

His eyes darted back to where he’d last seen the specter and found that they were already on the run, with a swampert, three glalie, and the strangely familiar, black serpent in pursuit. Solonn joined the chase, readying an ice beam, trying to get a bead on the now erratically-moving creature…

And then the creature suddenly stopped short, taken by surprise. So did everyone else, in spite of themselves. Solonn caught himself staring; he forcefully snapped himself out of it and let his ice beam fly. It hit its mark, alongside another ice beam and a mud bomb.

Leaving the specter a prone, shuddering heap at the feet of the apparently human being who’d just joined them.

The man, short and bald, let his gaze flick up to the other pokémon in the room with him for only a moment before returning it to the creature trying to lift themself up before him. In his hand, something that looked black and reddish-gold in the deep crimson light glinted for a moment before hurtling toward the specter—an ultra ball, Solonn realized.

“Get ready to open fire on ’em again,” the man said, and Solonn could have sworn he recognized the voice from somewhere. The face, too. “That thing’s not guaranteed to hold.”

No sooner than he’d spoken, the ball burst open, spilling its captive out in a flood of white light and golden sparks. Another barrage of attacks hit the specter the instant they rematerialized, and ice encased them once again, their lightless flames suspended in mid-flicker. The man threw another ultra ball; it sucked the specter in and clunked to the ground, where it shook, and shook… and shook…

And fell still.

The ultra ball held Solonn’s stare as fast as it held its new prisoner, but only for a moment. Then he looked back up at the man who’d captured the strange pokémon… and then, at last, he realized who he was looking at.

Either someone had cobbled together a very convincing disguise or illusion, or else Ren Bridges, once a member of the illustrious Apex League, had survived the Extinction.

The human, or whatever he was, stooped to pick up the ball, minimizing it and tucking it away into one of his pockets. He swept a gaze over the dumbfounded crowd that shared the red-lit space with him, looking fairly nonplussed himself.

“Okay,” he said, sounding a bit shaky but managing to speak over the alarm regardless, “okay. What in the hell just happened?”

Silence. It was hard to do much of anything but goggle in disbelief—and suspicion. Yes, he looked like Ren. Yes, he sounded like him. But DeLeo had sounded and looked human, too. Solonn would have never guessed there was an ordinary meowth behind that façade.

The human met the swampert’s gaze in an instant. His dark eyes were huge with alarm. “…Say that again,” he said.

“I, uh, said I could tell you what happened if you could understand me, but…” The swampert cocked his head at the human. “Are you telling me you can?”

The human didn’t respond right away. He glanced back over his shoulder for a long moment, his hairless brows tightening. Finally, “Apparently so,” he said, half-shrugging. “Apparently I decided to lock myself in a tube for some reason and came out of it able to understand pokémon.” He gave a strange little laugh. “Ordinarily I’d be celebrating. But again…” His hand rose to rub at his temple. “I can’t remember why I was in there. I can’t even remember building the damn thing.”

Solonn just stared, unsure what to think. Exactly what he was looking at was a question that still needed answering, and at this point he wasn’t even sure if it could be. But part of him was starting to sympathize with the man—he knew firsthand what it felt like to have missing memories. Missing memories and unexplained linguistic abilities.

Between that and the fact that the adrenaline was starting to fade, allowing the pain of his injuries to come to the forefront, it was getting a little difficult to care whether or not the human was as he seemed.

“And what the hell was a nullshade of all things doing down here?” the human went on.

“So,” Viraya said, “that’s what that was.”

The human stared at her mutely for a moment before nodding. He pulled the ultra ball back out and stared at it in consternation. “These things aren’t even supposed to exist anymore…”

“Neither are you,” Solonn thought aloud. The human met his gaze, the hand holding the ultra ball dropping to his side. Solonn bit his tongue, all but oblivious to the pain in light of all his other injuries. Even they were forgotten for a moment when he imagined flames shooting from the human’s hands, engulfing him and boiling his blood…

“What… Why the hell not?” the human asked.

“You… Your kind is extinct,” Evane explained softly. She sounded as if she didn’t want to believe it.

The human looked as though he honestly couldn’t believe it. As if he honestly didn’t know the Extinction had happened, that he should be long since dead and dealt with just like the rest of his people.

“That’s…” he began, the blood drained from his face. “No. That’s not possible.”

Evane started to respond, but a growing noise cut her off. It sounded like something heavy being dragged along, and it was coming from the tunnel leading back to the surface.

“More company,” Ren muttered. He stashed the ultra ball, readying a poké ball in its stead, and dashed toward the breach in the wall, just small and nimble enough to get past the pokémon.

Solonn was almost right on his heels, hope stirring inside him at the approaching sound—he was sure he knew exactly who was coming down to join them. That hope faltered when the noise stopped before its source could appear—Why’d he stop? Oh gods, please be all right, please…

The human stopped at the breach and unleashed a greninja. Solonn’s eyes went huge and his mouth dropped open, but not at the frog. He distantly remembered learning that Ren had one on his roster, though he couldn’t seem to recall anything else about Ren’s team. The greninja wasn’t much of a surprise.

The faces he saw looking back at him from the tunnel—two, when he’d only dared to expect one at the most—were another story.

“Wait, don’t!” he cried out as he came to a stop himself, looking up past the human with equal parts worry and astonishment. “They’re not enemies!”

They were anything but. A short distance up the tunnel, a claydol hovered unsteadily just above its muddy floor—a claydol missing one of their hands and part of their head. Somehow, incredibly, they were still alive. Further back, a steelix lay nearly motionless.

<We…> Oth said weakly, voicelessly, <we…>

The human stared at them, frowning. The greninja refrained from attacking, but glared up distrustfully as if ready to shift gears at any moment.

Solonn winced as Oth nearly dropped from the air. “Please, we’ve got to help them!” he cried.

“Not us,” Viraya said from nearby. “Her.” She edged her way as close to the breach as she could; the human and greninja both helpfully stepped aside. “Oth! You’ve got to call Quiul here!”

<I… c-can… cannot,> the claydol said. Gods, they sounded like they were hanging by a thread… <Th—> They shuddered. <The… l-link…>

The human cast another glance back toward the hallway he’d come from. His mouth drew into a thin line. Then he recalled his greninja.

“I haven’t been down here in a while,” he said. He was starting to sound hoarse, presumably on account of the fact that he still had to compete with that alarm. “I think there might be medical supplies around here somewhere. I think I can remember how to get there. In the meantime…”

He produced and released another poké ball. There was a burst of light… and then, standing between him and the breach, was a kwazai.

For a moment, Solonn couldn’t help but wonder if it was Ntairow who’d just appeared in their midst. But no… no, this one was taller. More solidly built.

“Pain split,” the human instructed her, “for the claydol, at the very least. Try to fit in the steelix too, but only if you can handle it.”

The kwazai gave a quick nod, then dropped and scrambled up the tunnel on her many arms. Solonn looked past Viraya to watch the kwazai work. He should be concerned for her, some tiny part of him thought. Too much of the rest of him was worried about Oth and Grosh to allow it.

A pale yellow aura shone around the kwazai and her first patient for a moment, followed by several little bursts of orange light. The kwazai slumped, dark blood dripping from the side of her head and running off one of her hands, then wormed her way around Oth with a pained grunt and began crawling up toward Grosh.

As light swelled in the tunnel once more, Solonn took in the kwazai’s handiwork thus far. Oth… had still seen better days for sure. Their head was somewhat more intact than it’d been, but the eyes and hand on that side were still missing. Their levitation was a bit steadier now, and they proceeded down the tunnel with no further delay.

“Oth…” Solonn’s eyelight wavered as the claydol passed by. Though they were certainly in better shape than before, seeing their injuries up close in the pulsing red light made them seem even more horrific somehow. Soon Solonn could bear to look at them no longer, turning his gaze back toward Grosh and the kwazai.

“Oth,” Viraya spoke up again, “can you reach her now?”

The claydol gave a low, somber rattle. <The link was broken in the midst of my injuries. I am sorry.>

“It’s not your fault,” Solonn said quietly, still staring up the tunnel. The kwazai’s work was finished now, and Grosh was stirring. The steelix lifted his head, blinking blearily, and noticed the blue figure lying prone in front of him.

The human noticed, too. “Ah, Demi… I told you not to overdo it…” A red beam fired from out of sight to recall the kwazai.

Only to be deflected by the pile of dirt and stone that had suddenly dropped to block their view.

The human swore loudly, and he started to head up the tunnel himself—then backed right out as it continued to cave in, earth falling in a wave toward the red-lit room. The surrounding space rumbled, and Evane, Viraya, and the swampert made for the hallway beyond, but the room held.

The human stared at the resealed wall. “Come on,” he muttered, in a tone befitting a prayer, “come on…”

No sooner had he spoken than the breach burst back open again, a massive head flinging mud and small rocks all over the room and its occupants.

Once everyone was done flinching, and the last of the protect shields dropped, they took in the sight of the newly-arrived steelix. Most of him couldn’t fit into the room even if it weren’t occupied at the time; recognizing this, they began backing out of the way. Grosh let about a quarter of himself in, then lowered his head, opened his jaws, and let the kwazai he was carrying slide gently to the floor.

Demi was a mess. There wasn’t much of her that wasn’t caked in soil and blood that looked black under the emergency lights. It was clear she’d taken on more damage than she should’ve, and now the concern that had been absent finally made it to the surface of Solonn’s mind. “Thank you,” he said quietly, and bowed his head.

The light in the room intensified briefly as the human finally recalled Demi. That he’d managed to was a good sign. It meant she was still alive.

Grosh dragged a couple more feet of himself into the room; everyone else backed up further. He lifted his head, blinking in the flashing light. It shone off his armor as the filth began sliding away.

Then he spotted the human.

Grosh’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “You’re a fake,” he decided aloud, and began growling deep in his throat.

The human swallowed hard, looking up at the massive serpent looming before him. “No,” he responded, “I’m not. But listen: this really isn’t the time to argue. You’re hurt, all of you.” He started blinking rapidly all of a sudden, rubbing at his eye. It came away smeared with something dark. “All of us,” he amended, and as he turned back toward the hallway, Solonn could see more of the stuff beading up and running down the human’s forehead.

His thoughts skipped a beat. Could a robotic disguise bleed?

“Come on,” the human said, and he began jogging down the hall with a hand pressed to his forehead. There was a moment’s delay; then, the others began following as fast as they could. No sense losing track of him when there was still some doubt—albeit just a little bit less than before—that he was what he seemed.

There was no real risk of running him over. No one was in any fit state to proceed at full speed. Solonn suspected they were all at least as sore as he was.

“How much further?” Viraya asked from her place near the back of the line.

“Not sure,” the human—it was getting harder and harder not to think of him as Ren—responded, without pausing or looking back. “But…” His head turned from right to left and back again, and he slowed at a fork in the road only to keep on moving straight ahead. “I think it’s not too far from here.” He took a left at the next fork, leading them down a slope. “I think… There. That might be it.”

He finally came to a stop in front of a tightly-sealed door—so tightly-sealed that it was a little hard to distinguish from the same-colored walls around it, especially in the still-pulsing light. The pad set in the wall next to the door was even harder to make out, but the human found it fast enough. He studied for a moment, silent save for his panting breaths, then pressed his hand to it.

The instant he did, the alarm finally, blessedly cut off. The surrounding light turned steady and white; Solonn and Viraya winced at the brightness, and Evane let out a hiss. Solonn forced his eyes open again and saw a green beam lancing into the human’s skull from a lens that had appeared above the door. The human (Ren, Solonn finally decided, however tentatively) stood frozen on the spot until the beam cut off; his free hand had dropped to his side, the fingers more blood-smeared than ever. The lens disappeared behind a metal iris, and the door rose out of the way with a faint hiss.

Beyond, there was an arched hallway, just barely wide enough to admit the likes of Solonn and Grosh. Another, less remarkable door lay at its end; there was no pad this time. Ren made for it, a hand reaching out to brace against the wall halfway there. Meanwhile the door behind closed loudly a moment after the last of the pokémon had passed through it; all of the glalie turned toward the noise in an instant, while everyone else but Oth craned their necks backward.

“Damn. Good thing that didn’t close any sooner,” the swampert said, glancing back at his own tailfin, then turned his attention forward once more. Everyone else did likewise.

Ren gripped the handle of the second door, then slid it out of the way with relative ease. He proceeded into the vast, white space beyond, making a beeline for something out of sight.

The pokémon followed him. They fanned out once they were all in the room, giving everyone room to move—to fight, if need be. Solonn had a protect shield on standby; he imagined the same was true of the other glalie. The same might also be true of that strange half-serpent. Solonn could see the creature more clearly than ever now—including his mutilated hand. He shuddered hard at the sight, hardly caring how his own injuries complained at the motion. He knew a fire-induced injury when he saw one.

He heard a chime then; turning, he found Ren standing near an active rejuvenation machine, its screen glowing softly as it healed its lone occupant. Meanwhile the human was pulling out a first aid kit from a cabinet at its side.

“You’ve done enough,” he murmured to himself as he threw a glance at the single poké ball nestled in the machine. Then he turned to the pokémon who were there in the flesh, blood still glistening on his face. “There’s max potions in here,” he said with a wave toward the open cabinet. Sure enough, one of its shelves was lined with distantly-familiar, blue-and-white bottles.

The swampert stepped forward—there was no one else around with sufficiently prehensile hands other than Ren, who was already busy tending to his own injury. He reached up and scooped out an armful of the potions, laid them at his feet, and began treating the other pokémon one by one. Only once everyone else had been taken care of did he mend his own cuts and scrapes.

<We are in your debt,> Oth said—gods, it was good to hear their mindvoice so strong again, <Mister…>

“Jarl,” the swampert filled in. “It’s Jarl. And you don’t owe me a thing,” he said with a dismissive wave, then settled back onto all fours. “If it wasn’t for you guys, I’d have never seen a real, live human again.”

“If that’s what he even is,” Grosh said, his voice rumbling through the floor. He edged closer to Ren, lowering his head until he was almost eye-level with him, and sniffed noisily. “You smell like the real thing. You look like the real thing. But I’ve been fooled before. Our psychic friend’s even been fooled before.” He lifted his head once more, staring down his blunt, metallic snout at the man before him. “So why, pray tell, should we believe you’re actually human?”

Ren fussed with his forehead a couple moments more, then turned to face Grosh. If he was trying not to look unnerved by the steelix, he was failing, albeit only just. He licked his lips. “You shouldn’t,” he said finally. “I have no way of proving it. What you’re assuming I must be instead, I can’t guess, but…”

With a sigh, he let himself slink to the floor. “My name is Ren,” he said, “and I swear to your gods and mine that I’m legitimately human. Whether or not you believe me… that’s fine. But just so you know: I don’t exactly believe you, either. About the humans, I mean.” And maybe he didn’t, for the most part. But something in his eyes told that on some level, he feared they might be right.

“You’ll see for yourself once we get back above,” Evane said.

At her words, Moriel turned and looked upward, more or less in the direction they’d come from. “Yes,” she said hollowly, and Solonn realized it was the first time she’d spoken since the fight against the nullshade had ended. Since Alij was… oh gods… Solonn felt a sharp pang in his chest as he watched Moriel look around, presumably for a way out that wouldn’t require anyone to tunnel through the earth and risk another cave-in. He followed her gaze…

And then froze, as his own landed upon something in the adjacent room, beyond a glass partition.

There, hanging from the ceiling, was a pair of white-and-silver arms. Beneath them was a padded platform with presently-open restraints and a presently empty steel tray to either side.

Solonn trembled in midair for a moment. Then he sank to the floor. “I’ve… I’ve been here,” he hissed, his eyes wide, their light flickering wildly.

“Wh-what? When?” Evane asked.

Solonn couldn’t answer. Thinking back to it got him all but stuck in the memory, and he could feel the pain that had come the first time he’d remembered it threatening to creep back into his head.

“It was when you were a child,” Ren said quietly, “wasn’t it.”

Paralyzed. Helplessly watching through the weak eyes of a snorunt as the arms came down. The pain intensified, and his eyes screwed shut. A hiss tore its way past his teeth.

“You are remembering…” Slowly, Ren got to his feet, then stepped closer to Solonn. The glalie turned in an instant, still hissing, his eyes blazing with pain; the human jolted, but held his ground. He sighed. “I’m sorry,” Ren said, and he both sounded and looked the part. “It wasn’t supposed to resurface… and it sure as hell wasn’t meant to hurt you.”

“What are you talking about?” A growl immediately followed Grosh’s words, and before anyone could stop it, he drove his freshly-mended tail between Ren and Solonn, shoving the human away. Ren hit the counter behind him, his breath knocked out on a pained note. “What did you do to him?” the steelix demanded, brandishing his tail-tip like a sword leveled right at Ren’s chest.

Ren eyed the tail warily as he struggled to catch his breath. Once he’d succeeded, he pulled his gaze away from it to look its owner right in the eyes.

“I tried to give him the ability to speak to humans,” Ren said. There was noticeable guilt in his voice.

Solonn couldn’t see Ren past the steelix. But he stared all the same, teeth parted, shaking on the spot. The memory playing in his mind abruptly cut out. So did the rest of his thoughts.

“The nanites didn’t take,” Ren went on. “So I…” He hesitated a moment, then visibly braced himself. “I sealed his memories of the whole thing—albeit ineptly.” He sighed again. “I put him through all that fear and confusion for nothing… Just sending him back didn’t feel like enough. I wanted to prevent him from having to relive that nightmare.”

“But it wasn’t for nothing,” Viraya said.

Solonn abruptly turned to face her, looking alarmed. “No!”

But Viraya kept on. “He can speak human language. Your procedure was a success. There wasn’t any need to seal his memories.”

“No,” Grosh rumbled, “there wasn’t.” He jabbed Ren with his tail, hard enough to bruise but not to pierce. The human gasped in pain.

“Grosh…” Evane said worriedly.

“He’s—” Ren began, only to break into a coughing fit. “He’s already remembering,” he managed weakly. “I can… I can unseal the rest. It’ll be easy since it’s already lifting. Just give me a chance; I can undo everything.”

Here Solonn rose once more. He circled around Grosh; somewhat reluctantly, Ren tore his gaze from the steelix to regard him.

“Everything,” Solonn repeated.

Ren nodded slowly. Then the full implications of what Solonn was getting at clicked. He averted his gaze. “I’m sorry for the way things played out,” he said. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to scare you. I should’ve given you a choice. And I’m giving you one now: I’m willing to deactivate them, if that’s what you really want. I’ll deactivate them. All of them. I… could even attempt to extract them if you’d prefer, but I have to warn you: it’d be very risky. More invasive than putting them in was. I don’t want to hurt you,” he stressed. “And if you decide you want to keep them active…” Another sigh. “Humanity could learn so, so much…”

“No,” Solonn said heavily, “they can’t. Not anymore.” He met Ren’s gaze directly. “Deactivate them,” he said. Part of him wanted the nanites gone altogether. The part that didn’t want to risk Grosh losing his son and Jen losing his brother won out.

“All right,” Ren said, “all right. But if you ever change your mind… come to the big brick house on Bayberry Street. You’ll know it when you see it. I can switch them back on anytime, but I can only do it from here.”

Solonn couldn’t imagine himself changing his mind. Not in a thousand years. “Then go ahead and undo it,” he said, his voice threatening to crack. “Now. Please.”

Ren nodded again. He looked up at Grosh again, silently seeking permission to go free. Grosh scowled at him but withdrew his tail.

“If you doublecross us…” the steelix warned, “if he doesn’t make it out of here alive, I will personally end you. Painfully.”

The human swallowed audibly. “…I understand,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt him. I promise.” Tentatively, still sore from Grosh’s prodding, he started moving toward a terminal off in the corner. “You had better still work…” he mumbled as he tried to start it up. He let out a sigh of relief when it hummed to life.

Moments passed as he keyed in command after command, then minutes. Solonn began to fear that Ren wasn’t keeping his word. The agitated grinding of steelix segments, gouging the floor with their spikes, told that Grosh felt likewise.

Then the room and everyone in it suddenly vanished, and all at once Solonn was on the other side of the glass.

* * *

Paralyzed. The arms descending. Strange, tugging pressure at his forehead. Rock-hard fingers effortlessly prying his jaws open. They tasted like nothing at all as they pushed his tongue out of the way.

The arms withdrew. Moments or minutes or hours later, they returned. One of them held something sharp. The hand drove it in somewhere under his jawline. It should’ve hurt. But it didn’t.

Elsewhere now. A strange, tall creature speaking to him, trying to get him to talk back. Correcting him every time he responded. Eventually giving up, a dismayed, regretful look on his face.

The other side of the glass. The platform where he’d lain just barely visible beyond. Apologies from the strange creature—the human—as something flashed in the corner.

Darkness.

The snowgrounds, with dozens of worried faces staring down at him. His mother, beyond grateful that he was safe again.

Safe again…

* * *

The present reasserted itself. With a delay, Solonn realized that he’d dropped to the floor again. He rose shakily, looking over the small crowd sharing the room with him. His eyes found Ren and locked on to him.

“That ought to have done it,” the human said quietly. “Just one thing left to check. I want you to speak to me, the way I’m speaking to you right now. My voice, my language. Try as hard as you can.”

Solonn felt his throat threaten to close. Even now, some part of him was hesitant to expose his abilities. But he found the courage to go ahead. He inhaled deeply…

And nothing intelligible came out.

A chill ran through him. Had the human robbed him of his ability to speak altogether? A couple of the other pokémon looked on with concern—and in Grosh’s case, suspicion—as if they were entertaining the same conclusion.

He tried again. Still nothing. He knew the human’s words, could still see them in his mind’s eye. He knew the sound of Ren’s voice. But when he tried to replicate them, his mouth and throat wouldn’t cooperate. His eyelight flickering, he tried using the words of his own kind.

“What…” he said hoarsely, speaking Virc this time, sounding like no one but himself. His eyes went huge. “I… I think it worked…” He attempted other languages, other voices, but the words continued to evade him, and his voice refused to change. He met Ren’s gaze and switched back to Virc. “I think it worked,” he said again, more confidently this time.

Ren let out the breath he’d been holding. “Good,” he said, wiping at his brow, “good.” He shut the terminal down. “Again, if you ever change your mind… just let me know, all right?”

Solonn didn’t respond. Even though it had proven reversible, and even though it would be his choice the next time around, he still couldn’t imagine accepting the talent that had led him through so much ever again.

“Can we leave now?” Moriel spoke up, her tone still subdued. “Please… just show us the way out.”

Ren nodded and stepped away from the terminal. “This way,” he said. “Oh… except for you,” he amended with an apologetic look toward Grosh. “I promise you: it’s not payback for earlier. The elevator just can’t handle weight like yours, and since you can’t levitate… I’m afraid you’ll just have to burrow your way back topside.”

Grosh made a rumbling noise deep in his chest, still looking somewhat distrustful of the human. “Be careful,” he said to the rest of the pokémon, his gaze sweeping over them and lingering on his son. Then, with no further warning, he plunged headfirst into the nearest sufficiently-sized patch of the floor. Everyone winced as chunks of it went flying in his wake.

“…I probably should have specified where,” Ren acknowledged aloud. He brushed off some of the dust and dirt that had settled on his shirt; then, “This way,” he said again, and began to lead the rest of the group away.

Solonn cast one last look back at the glass partition as he followed the others out of the room. The arms hung motionless now, the terminal in the corner dark and silent. As he left both behind, once and for all, he finally dared to believe that chapter of his life was over.

* * *

Ren’s home had seen better days, quite frankly. The nosepass who shared the house with him—the same one who’d been at the Hope Institute, Solonn discovered—blamed smeargle for the wrecked furniture and graffiti-covered walls, and no one questioned him, at least not as far as that damage was concerned.

The distinctly nose-shaped hole in the floor was another story.

Ren, the nosepass, and the swampert were off on their own, out of sight, the pokémon presumably trying to console the human. Ren had had a much easier time believing the nosepass about the Extinction, and he had not taken the news well. At all.

Moriel, Evane, and Viraya had not returned yet. Solonn imagined they’d be downtown for a long while. After a delay, his wits still pulling themselves back together, he’d begun to follow them away—only to stop dead in his figurative tracks when Grosh had emerged from under the street in front of Ren’s house.

The rage had more or less drained from the steelix’s features; Solonn suspected he’d taken it out on the earth deep below until he’d lacked the strength to do anything but surface. He’d slumped into a coil in Ren’s front yard, and Solonn had chosen to stay with him for the time being. Oth, meanwhile, had gone off in search of a teleporter to take the claydol back to Sinnoh so they could re-establish their link with Quiul.

As for when the party as a whole would be leaving Convergence… that remained in question.

They still hadn’t found Jen. At least, not for certain. The black, serpentine creature—a cryonide, Ren had called him—was indeed one of Solonn’s own kind, an evolved form of snorunt. And ever since learning this, he’d wondered if DeLeo had forced his half-brother to evolve. The cryonide had kept silent on the matter, pointedly averting his gaze.

The front doors opened. Armor and tough hide whispered over the threshold, and a breath later, the cryonide had joined them.

Solonn and Grosh turned to regard him. The question was plain in both their eyes, but only Grosh spoke it.

“So,” he said, as gently as he could. “Is there something you want to tell us?”

The cryonide didn’t answer right away. He was visibly shaking, the fangs at the ends of his mandibles clicking against his incisors. Finally, he folded his clawed hands and forced himself to look Solonn in the eye.

“I saw you,” he said. “Last night, at Hope. I… remembered you from the Haven—from when you took us. Or rescued us.” He shook his head. “Adn always told me you people were the enemy. That you wanted to force me into your army and make me kill anyone who got in our way. But then he turned into a ditto and tried to kill me. Now I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

The same ditto who’d become a nullshade, Solonn realized. That was Adn in that ultra ball.

More than ever, he was glad that creature had been captured.

Meanwhile he no longer doubted who he was speaking to in the least. I found you. Gods, I finally found you! But barely anything of the joy and relief that followed made it to his face, at least not at first. Pity stood stubbornly in the way. Even now, the Rannia’s lies endured.

“You can believe us,” Solonn said, his eyelight wavering. “Adn is out of the picture now.” The gardevoir-who-wasn’t was in the hands of an Apex trainer now. And while Solonn still wished to all gods that Ren had never experimented on him in the first place… the human had done the right thing in the end, at least. He still couldn’t trust Ren unconditionally, but he trusted him more than he had before his linguistic abilities had been put to rest. “You can trust us… we’re your family, Jen.”

The cryonide looked up at Grosh with uncertainty. Then he looked back over the length of his own serpent-tail. “There’s still a lot I don’t understand,” he said quietly. “But… I think I believe you.”

Solonn wanted nothing more in that moment than to move forward, to let Jen embrace him. But those spikes running down the cryonide’s chest gave him pause. As if on cue, Grosh stirred and loosely, carefully wrapped his coils around the other two, insofar as he could.

“You can come home with us,” Solonn said at length, as Grosh uncoiled somewhat reluctantly. “It’s not the same home you remember,” nor the one you should, “but… it’s nice. The people there have promised to take care of us.”

Jen mulled it over, but not for long. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, but… I have to stay here. At least for now. My dad needs me. He’s been through a lot lately, and…” His eyes went huge as something occurred to him. “Oh gods, our house. I think Adn burned it down…” he said, and he sounded sickened by the thought. He crawled up and over Grosh’s tail. “I have to find out,” he said. “I can’t go anywhere else right now.”

Solonn watched the cryonide’s retreating back for a moment. “Then neither will I,” he decided aloud, and slipped past his father to follow Jen.

“That makes two of us,” Grosh said, then came slithering after them, tearing up the lawn beneath him.

Jen stopped and looked over his shoulder, then turned away once more with what almost looked like a smile. “Okay,” he said, and carried on.

As he followed his half-brother, Solonn wondered if he’d ever leave Convergence behind again. He decided, albeit not too readily, that maybe it didn’t really matter all that much. His family was as whole as it could ever be again. He was closer to normal than he’d been in many years. If this place would be his home from here on out, memories and all… that was all right.

The PokéCommunity

Meta

Pokémon characters and images belong to The Pokémon Company International and Nintendo. This website is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Creatures, GAMEFREAK, or The Pokémon Company International. We just love Pokémon.